Discussions
on Ukraine and Crimea these days are inevitably ending up with
questions regarding the military parity between the armed forces of the
Russian Federation and the Western world. Therefore, it was only
natural, if not inevitable, that this blog's resident military analyst
would provide our virtual community with an exclusive report on the
subject matter. Following this little prelude, I am very pleased to present to
you comrade Zoravar's assessment of the military situation in Crimea and the balance of power that currently
exists between the Russian Federation and the West.For further perspective on regional conflicts, please make
sure to revisit Zoravar's three previous blog entries -

In a move only befitting a veteran grossmeister, President Vladimir Putin has begun to recreate a "Maidan" in eastern Ukraine. Barricades, burning tires, hooded men with clubs and shields, occupation of public buildings, clashes with police, calls for liberation, proclamations of independence, accusations of foreign meddling, threats of a crackdown... It's all there.

And now, the battle for Ukraine has entered a new and perhaps a final phase. It is clear that Moscow is luring Kiev to overreact. Moscow is also forcing Western officials to publicly speak against the very same tactics they used only weeks ago to topple the pro-Russian leadership in Ukraine. As Russia expertly reveals the Western world's criminality, hypocrisy and impotence, it is meticulously setting up its field of play throughout eastern and southern Ukraine.

Moscow may be hoping for the "Karabakhization" of eastern and southern Ukraine.

As of this writing, pro-Russian separatists (most probably led by GRU operatives) have occupied government buildings in several strategic eastern Ukrainian cities and Moscow has amassed tens-of-thousands of troops and military hardware right on the border of eastern Ukraine. Moscow is patiently waiting to see what Kiev and their benefactors in the West will do next. I strongly suspect that Kremlin officials are actually hoping for a harsh overreaction by the Western-backed regime in Kiev.

Will Kiev take the bait?

An early attempt by Kiev ended in utter humiliation when the Ukrainian military unit hastily sent to quell the unrest in the east quickly defected to the Russian side. If Kiev garners enough courage (or is pushed into the fire by its Western benefactors) and attempts to do more militarily, and there is widespread bloodshed as a result, Moscow will have the legitimate excuse to send in Russian troops. This is not a theory of mine. Moscow officials have publicly stated their readiness to "respond if Russia's interests are attacked" in eastern Ukraine. If Kiev does not send in large numbers of its security forces, and thereby allows pro-Russian forces to dig in and further spread their movement throughout eastern and southern Ukraine, the entire region in question will effectively become a semi-autonomous region taking orders from Moscow - similar to the situation that has existed in Armenia's Nagorno Karabakh province for the past twenty years.

Therefore, it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario for Kiev.

Thus far, Kiev's reaction has been very limited and quite measured. They are periodically carrying out small raids against pro-Russian activists and pulling back. There are small numbers of casualties on both sides as a result of these measures by Kiev. The arson that led to the deaths of several dozen unarmed pro-Russian civilian activists in Odessa was a criminal act carried out by extremist thugs from western Ukraine (perhaps with the blessings of Kiev), they were not the result of a military strike.

Nevertheless, the illegitimate regime in Kiev and Western powers must be realizing that if given the order to move west, within a few hours the Russian forces stationed on Ukraine's eastern borders will smash right through any defense lines Kiev is capable of erecting and within a few days reach the Dnieper River and it will be the death of Ukraine as we knew it. The Russian military has already finalized its invasion plans. I am confident that as I write these words, Russian special forces are setting up positions throughout eastern and southern Ukraine in an attempt to gather military intelligence and, if need be, ambush Ukrainian military units that may enter the region. If the shooting begins, and the Russian military crosses the border, we can all expect another short war.

Needless to say, faced with a monumental disaster of its own making, the West is in a serious panic for they have absolutely no levers against Russia - other than disseminating anti-Russian hysteria and disinformation through their propaganda outlets.

Western news media's complicity

Isn't it revealing just how complicit the Western news media overall has been in all this? When observing any one of the news organizations in question, one immediately gets struck by
the troubling realization that when it comes to serious political
matters, somehow all their talking points suddenly become identical.

Case in point: When they are
reporting on the pro-Russian protests in eastern and southern Ukraine, every
single one of the news commentators in the US now make
sure to add that Russian money and Russian provocateurs are behind the
unrest, despite the fact that there exists no credible evidence behind the accusation. Yet not a single one of the Western news outlets in question covered the widespread reports of Western provocateurs and Western money in Ukraine that led to the ouster of its democratically elected pro-Russian president. While every single one of the Western news outlets were reporting that EuroMaidan protesters were pro-democracy activists seeking justice and freedom from corruption, they are all now claiming that eastern Ukrainian activists are Russian-backed separatists seeking secession.

Or when they all report: "Western sanctions are 'hurting' Russia"... "Russian Ruble and
the Russian economy is 'tanking' as a result of Crimea"... "The White
House 'warns' Russia"... "Obama 'tells' Putin"... "The US and its allies are standing up to Russia"... "the 'world' is united against Russia" "US is bolstering its forces in Europe".

Moreover, has the reader noticed that after being relentlessly bombarded by countless heartrending reports about individual "EuroMaidan" protestors - all to put a human face on the struggle of course - all of a sudden, not a single news organization in the West wants to cover the struggle of pro-Russian protesters?!

The most sickening example of this has been how the Western news media's coverage of the murder of over forty unarmed civilians in Odessa by pro-Kiev mobs in plain sight. Had this deliberate murder of unarmed civilians occurred back during the Maidan protests in
Kiev and the culprits were President Yanukovych's supporters, every
single one of the propaganda outlets posing as news organizations in the
Western world would have bombarded their viewing audience with a multitude of heartrending news
reports on a 24/7 basis. The faces of the dead would be made public for
all to see and lament. Emotional interviews with dead activists'
family members and friends back in their home villages and towns is all
we would be seeing for days on end. But since all the dead in Odessa were from the pro-Russian side, all the news coverage in the Western world has been deliberately vague and misleading.

How can this be?

How can there be so much in common between the official line peddled in Washington and what "independent" news organizations in the Western world, regardless of whether they are on the "left" or on the "right", are reporting? How can such a thing happen if there really exist such a thing called "independent journalism" in the Western world?

Well folks, similarity of rhetoric between Western officials and Western news press does not happen by chance because the news press in the West has not been independent for a very long time. Let's remind ourselves that something as important as the news media - a powerful method of controlling the sheeple's minds - will not be allowed independence. There is in fact high level coordination and collaboration between the Western world's mainstream news media outlets and Western power-centers.

The Western news media's coverage of topics related to the Russian Federation can be described more as psychological operations (psy-ops) and mental
conditioning of the audience than as reporting the news. Yes,
I agree that Russia Today (the very popular English language, Russian
state sponsored news organization led by the Russian-Armenian Margarita
Simonyan) also engages in similar tactics when it comes to topics
pertaining to the West. But, unlike news organizations in the US, RT has
never claimed to be an independent news outlet. The problem here is
that the US news press is supposed to be independent. Remember?

Incidentally,
when it comes to eastern Ukraine, why do we see the sudden and total
absence of Western funded NGOs that were in the business of promoting
human rights, democracy and self-rule in Kiev just recently? Why aren't these Western funded NGOs also promoting the right to self-determination in eastern and southern Ukraine and chronicaling the human rights abuses by the Western backed junta in Kiev?

This is the point we need to brand in our minds: Western news media outlets are in the business of disseminating Western propaganda and psy-ops - not news. Their persistent and intense information war against Russia is primarily meant to alter/condition the
mindsets of the Western public by boosting their confidence, placating their fears and reenforcing the notion in their minds that Russia is an oppressive yet backward nation - but one that is also afraid of the West. They are trying to convey a message
that Washington is still leading, still powerful and still in control. God forbid their decades long game of
make belief falls apart and they are exposed to what they really are.

Western sanctions will ultimately help Russia Western sanctions, as predicted, have not hurt Russia. None of the sanctions envisioned by the West is capable of truly hurting Russia. They will sooner hurt the EU. The Russian Federation is one of the most self-reliant nation-states on earth. In fact, Western sanctions have only served to encourage Russians to turn inward and eastward. West-leaning voices in Moscow are becoming increasingly marginalized, east-leaning voices in Moscow are gaining strength. Today, there is the possibility for an even closer alliance to be formed between Russia and China. We shouldn't be surprised if the great German nation also joins this alliance in some form, after it finally frees itself from Anglo-American-Judeo occupation. Russia, Germany, China, such an alliance can effectively end the two hundred year old Anglo-American era.

As a result of Western aggression, talk about abandoning the US Dollar as a global reserve currency is once more gaining momentum. News reports out of Moscow recently are loud signals pointing to this direction. Needless to say, Western officials are panicking. The Western world essentially exists as a result of the US Dollar's status as global reserve currency.If this all snow balls and the US Dollar gradually stops being used in international transactions... party over! The Soviet Union's tumultuous collapse will look like a leisurely walk through pretty flower garden compared to what the Western world will suffer.

As Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi found out, Western officials take attempts against the global hegemony of the US Dollar very-very seriously. But, as the West is now finding out, Russia is not Iraq nor is it Libya.

With that said, just think for a moment: What right do Western officials have in telling other nations what currency they can trade with? What right do Western officials have in confiscating people's bank accounts for political reasons? What right do Western officials have in telling other nations who they can and cannot trade with? What right do Western officials have in placing embargoes on nations who don't comply with Western demands?

The near total control the Western world has over global trade and finance is the greatest danger mankind faces today. The much touted "globalized economy" is thoroughly rigged by Western powers. Consequently, all roads inevitably lead to the Anglo-American world. If nations of the world are forced to trade with the West, if nations of the world are forced to use its currency for trade, how can they ever effectively stand up to the West when the West moves against them?It's a wonderful racket the Western world has had in place since Bretton Woods. For humanity's sake, for our children's sake, I can only hope that this over seventy year old abomination is coming to an end. Nevertheless, recent events have once again reinforced the notion that the world's financial and economic levers have to be taken away from Western control and the US Dollar has to be dethroned.The Russian Spring has arrived

Very methodical, very patient, very thorough, very professional, very meticulous. The Russian Bear has been very impressive. Russia's reaction to the situation in Crimea and eastern Ukraine has been, in my opinion, the most impressive yet non-lethal national liberation campaign we have seen in modern times.
The strategic Crimean peninsula has been reunited with Mother Russia and
eastern and southern Ukraine are, at the very least, on the path to
federalization or self rule. The following are my previous three blog entries on the crisis in Ukraine. Please revisit them for more insight -

Abruptly
awakened in the summer of 2008, the Russian Bear is now awake and
on the prowl. It's been a brilliant display of diplomacy, public relations, realpolitik, cyber warfare, special operations
and military
might, the likes of which we have not seen in decades, and the likes of
which only President Putin could provide. Like a well-oiled and finely-tuned machine, Russian special forces were able to paralyze the Ukrainian military and fully secure the entire Crimean peninsula - without a single shot fired in anger.
Hundreds-of-thousands of Russian troops and thousands of
units of military hardware have been on the constant move from the
Baltics to the Far East in an impressive show-of-force not seen in the
world for decades. There even
was an ICBM test lunch, in case the aforementioned was not enough to
impress or to distress Russia's antagonists.The reunification of Crimea with Mother Russia was
so efficient and esthetically pleasing that political observers and military enthusiasts
worldwide, including Westerners, have been in absolute awe.Yes folks, the Russian Spring has arrived, although not in the way Western demons were hoping for -

Russia's
armed forces have come a very long way since they liberated Abkhazia and South
Ossetia during the summer of 2008. Although Russia's military at the time had achieved all its
objectives against Georgia's
Western/Israeli/Turkish
trained and armed forces with relative ease and low numbers of casualties, it was
still clearly rough around the edges and its military hardware left a lot to be
desired. But as veteran journalist
David Ignatious and the world renowned Western military publication Janes have attested, times
are indeed changing. President Putin's efforts to reform and
modernize Russia's armed forces has been a success and this something that is
deeply troubling Western powers.

Russia today is executing politics in a brilliant manner, drawing from all classical schools-of-thought pertaining to propaganda, statecraft and warfare. None of this should have surprised Western observers for Russia today is in its element.

Russia's natural need for defensive
depth

When
it comes to understanding Moscow's actions, disregard every single
explanation you have heard from every single expert, analyst or observer
in the Western media and consider the following.

Foremost, Moscow is not trying to resurrect the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire. Yes, many of the ceremonial rituals adopted by the modern Russian state are inspired by Czarist Russia. Yes, Russian President
Vladimir Putin has claimed that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest
geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. President Putin is also said to have said: Those
who do not feel bad about the demise of the Soviet Union have no heart, those
who want it back have no brains.

Once
more, for those Armenians who as a result of Western propaganda are
having problems with reality: Deeper Russian involvement in Armenia simply means closer, more effective political, military, economic and
financial cooperation between former Soviet states - and not the lose of
Armenia's "independence" as our Western funded activists are
desperately trying to convince us. In creating the CSTO and the Eurasian Union, Russia is putting together an answer to the monopoly set up by EU and NATO.

No, Bolshevism is not returning to Moscow. No, the Soviet Union is not returning to Armenia. And no, the
Russian
nation does not have the appetite - or is stupid enough - to ever seek the
resurrection
of the Russian Empire. Thus, when
we talk about greater Russian involvement in the context of former
Soviet republics, what we are essentially talking about is a
Russian-led confederation of independent states closely working with
each other. Suggesting anything else is utter nonsense derived from Western propaganda, political illiteracy and/or paranoia. We therefore need to put
aside the silly notion that Russia is somehow trying to recreate the
"Soviet Union". This type of tacky fearmongering is the by-product of professional Russophobes such as Zbigniew
Brzezinski, warmongering psychopaths like John McCain and opportunistic reptiles
like Hillary Clinton.

So then, why is Russia stirring as of late?

Simply put: Because they don't want to be faced with confronting their enemies at their doorstep, where it's too late.

Major
powers seek to surround themselves with allied or, at the very least,
neutral powers that do not pose an economic or militarily threat. For military planers in
charge of securing national borders, securing something that is know as satellite states, defensive
depth,forward defense,buffer zones or zones of influence
are an essential part of a comprehensive
national defense formula.

What Moscow has therefore been doing
in its "near abroad" (i.e. former Soviet territory) is something all
nation-states do to protect themselves. This is especially the case with major
nation-states
who have historically had serious problems with neighbors. Russia's
military actions need to be looked at from within such a prism.

Once opposing powers have set-up shop at your doorstep,
you have already lost half the battle. Since Russian society by in-large has been able to resist the corrosive effects of Western Globalism and have maintained Russian nationalism, conservatism and Christian faith, no self-respecting Russian
official today will be comfortable with NATO and EU closing on the borders of
Russia. Western officials know this very well but encroaching on Russian territory is exactly what
they have been doing.

Western European powers have
the Atlantic Ocean and allied buffer states in central and eastern Europe for their
defensive depth. The United States has two natural barriers: Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans and two allied buffer states, Canada and Mexico for its
security. On the other hand, the Russia Federation, a vast tract of land that
stretches from Europe to the Far East, does not have the luxury of its peers in
the Western world. Be it in central Europe, the Baltics, Scandinavia, the
Arctic region, the Black Sea region, the Caucasus (north and south), central
Asia, Chinese border or Alaska, Russian officials are constantly on the
watch. It's not an enviable responsibility, but it is admirable how successful
Russian leaders have been for the most part during the past several hundreds.

Russia's geography has for
ages dictated Russian political policy and has given Russians themselves their
unique characteristics.Russia's
legendary military prowess is a
by-product of the Russian people's genetic makeup, its folk culture and
the harsh realities of Russia's geography. Russia's statecraft including its military is thus a
reflection of Russia's natural needs.

For
further insight into Russian nationalism and the mindset of the Kremlin in recent years, please
devote some time to watching Vladimir Pozner's fascinating interview
with Alexander Dugin.Dugin
is a well known
Russian ideologue and a political philosopher with close ties to Kremlin
officials. The ideas, philosophies, culture, social agendas and
political formulas represented by men like Dugin are what the
Anglo-American-Jewish global establishment fears the most in Russia today. An English language transcript is available -

During the early post-Soviet
years, Moscow begrudgingly tolerated Western inroads into former communist
regions of eastern-Europe simply because it was in no shape or form to react in any meaningful
way.

Western policymakers, however, knew very well that Ukraine,
Belarus and greater Caucasus region would be Moscow's red lines for these were
strategic regions Russia would not give up. Perhaps it was their
imperial hubris that blinded them, perhaps desperation.Regardless of why they
did what they did in Ukraine, the Western world will now have a rude awakening for this is not
1853, nor is this the 1990s. The Russian Bear has come out of
its hibernation and it is hungry and angry and there is nothing Western powers can do to stop it.

If
I had to described Western military in a few words, it would be: Drug
induced, multiracial, sexually deviant hordes armed with fancy yet expensive gadgets that don't always work.

Historically, Anglo-American militaries (particularly their land
forces) have never been very effective in combat against equals. Napoleon's depleted and exhausted army in 1812 was defeated by Prussians, not the British. Anglo-American-French forces did not militarily defeat Germany during the First World War, Germany surrendered due to domestic problems. Nazi Germany was defeated only when the Soviet Union turned the tide in 1943 as a result of a series of German military blunders. Japan was only defeated when the US resorted to using atomic bombs. In both world wars, the US entered the European theater of war during its closing stages. The Korean war was a stalemate. The Vietnam war was a defeat. The West didn't dare engage the Serbian army in ground warfare. Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been failures for the most part. Libya was less like a war and more like an armed robbery of a wealthy yet vulnerable nation.

I am a student of military history and I cannot think of a war or a
major battle during which Western forces were able to defeat a truly powerful foe on the battlefield without serious assistance and/or without using weapons of mass destruction.

Yet, due to Western successes (albeit limited) against African, Middle Eastern and Central
Asian tribesmen in recent years - as well as ubiquitous movies, novels and television
programming celebrating US military prowess, most people today simply assume that Western militaries are formidable on the modern battlefield. Western military strength is more a matter perception than a thing of reality. But as long as they continue producing blockbuster films such as Zero Dark Thirty and Flags of our Fathers, the global sheeple will continue believing. It can rightfully be said that the Western world's greatest weapon is Hollywood (and the US Dollar of course). The reality is that Western militaries are not all that impressive under closer scrutiny. Therefore, don't believe the hype.

When celebration of gay marriage and mass shootings continue to make news headlines around the Western world, you know Western civilization is in decline.

The Western spirit today is totally devoid of Christianity. The very concept of the family in the Western world has been deformed beyond recognition. Western societies have become dumbed-down. Western men have become demasculinized. Western women have lost their femininity. Inundated
by ultra-liberalism and multiculturalism, Western societies have lost
the true meaning of culture, nationalism and a general sense of national direction. Over medicated, over entertained, overweight and undereducated, Americans have become a very strange hybrid within the human race. Washington has been hijacked by money-men, mega-corporations and self-serving special interests. Without God, family and country, Westerners have become instinct driven animals seeking self-gratification. A reflection of the cultural decline the Western world is suffering is now being seen in the condition of its armed forces. Historic rates of suicides, substance abuse and sexual abuse is the new norm in the American military. Moreover, the Pentagon has become a den of corruption and the US military is now dangerously overconfident of its abilities and overdependent on comfort and technology - and the only combat experience they have had in recent decades is against third world militaries and
backward Islamic tribes.

For the Western soldier war fighting has been very comfortable(imagine,
just
the cost for keeping American troops cool in Iraq and Afghanistan is
many times more than the national defense budgets of most nations on
earth today) and, dare I say, even fun - just like a video game!

With that said, a vast majority of the combat arsenal in Western
inventories today are in fact Cold War era productions. The modern but ridiculously expensive
stealth aircraft such as the B-2, F-22 and the F-35 are too impractical and too flawed. Such weapons systems only serve to deplete state coffers. And the world famous aircraft carrier battle groups, the pride of the US navy for decades, are in reality only
good at terrorizing third world populations into compliance.

The
US and Britain have traditionally been
air and naval powers. Such powers are never truly successful on
land - where it matters the most. In my opinion, to be considered a truly successful
military, one has to have a very powerful land force, that is only supplemented
by air and naval forces. While the West surpasses (thus far) the
capabilities of Russia on the open oceans and in the air, Russia will by
the end of this decade have by-far the most powerful land force on
earth. Russia will be the most formidable military on the Eurasian continent. But, even today, Russia could hold its own against Western
air and naval forces via the utilization of highly sophisticated
anti-ship
and anti-aircraft missiles.

At the end of the day, when it comes to raw fighting abilities, I'd pick aggressive and patriotic Slavic
Russians and their very lethal, efficient and innovative military industrial
complex over any other nation on earth today.

If
it somehow comes down to a shooting war between Ukrainians and
Russians, the Russian military will utterly crush their
Ukrainian opponents - with or without Western mercenary support. Let's recall that six years ago, Russia, with barely over ten thousand troops armed with terribly obsolete military hardware, was able to totally crush Georgia's Western/Israeli/Turkish armed and trained military in a matter of two or three days. Let's also recognize that in the years following Russia's astounding military success in Georgia, Moscow has been modernizing its armed forces to the tune of hundreds-of-billions of dollars. Today, Russia's armed forces have the anti-ship weaponry to sink
every opposing
warship within the entire Black Sea basin - including Western ones - within the first few days of the war's
outbreak. Today, Russia's armed forces are capable of having air and ground superiority
throughout eastern Ukraine, also within the first few days of the war.
The kind of military assets Moscow has stationed right on eastern Ukraine's borders is more than enough for Russian troops to reach the Dnieper River within a few short days. We also need to recognize that Kiev's already under-trained, under-funded, under-equipped, underfed and undermanned military units will be
severely handicapped by divisions along ethnic and ideological lines
and some units may even begin fighting each other.

At the end of the day, there is
little doubt that
Russia will make short work out of the Ukrainian military and there is even less doubt that the West will remain on the sidelines.

Even if by some strange miracle Western powers decide to wage a conventional war against Russia, they will still be incapable of resisting an all-out Russian onslaught on Russia's borders. For any kind of a truly effective military response against Russian troops in Ukraine, Western forces will need to bring significant naval assets into the Black
Sea. And that is their major handicap against Russia. This isn't 1853, hitting Western warships in the Black Sea would be
like shooting fish in a barrel for the Russian air force, navy and land-based anti-ship missile systems. A few US warships at the bottom of the
sea in the first few days of combat will make Western forces either
withdraw or respond with nuclear weaponry. Since they are not ready to
do either, they will not risk any form of direct combat with Russia. Moreover,
in such a farfetched hypothetical scenario, any airbase in Europe that
Western aircraft use to fly sorties over Ukraine will go up in
flames by highly accurate ballistic missiles or air strikes.

Let's also recognize that in a
scenario where Western troops are militarily engaging in operations against Russian troops, the West will also most probably be faced with having to deal
with a large Russian land invasion of the Baltics and the south
Caucasus.

As decadent and evil as Western powers are, Western officials are not insane enouhg to risk a world war, especially one that has the potential to go nuclear.

As I said, faced with a major defeat, Western forces will have to withdraw or respond with nuclear weaponry. Since they are not ready to
do either, they will not risk direct combat with Russia - especially over something as insignificant for the Western world as Ukraine. As I said, as evil as they may be, Western officials are not crazy enough, they do not have the military capabilities necessary
and they do not have the political will - or courage or the financial resources or
the public support - to directly engage Russia in any form of military
combat, especially to protect a bunch of worthless wannabe Nazis in Kiev.

In other words, Washington will stick to its worthless sanctions against Russia... something that will in fact prove counterproductive for the Western world in the long-term, as it will force Russia and its allies to move away from the US Dollar thereby weakening the currency's global dominance.

Kessab may be an opportunity in disguise

As long as Yerevan preserves its strategic ties with Moscow and works to cultivate better Russo-Armenian relations, we Armenians will sooner-or-later see the reunification of Artsakh with Armenia - with full Russian backing. However, before we expect Russians to assist us in such a manner we as a people need to rid ourselves of our Asiatic ways, political illiteracy, Russophobia and of course Western agents. As long as Armenia flirts with the political West and continues to host an army of Western operative and organizations, Moscow will keep Armenia on a very short leash.In other words, Armenia needs to kill its complimentary politics nonsense before it kills Armenia.

The
signs out of Yerevan, however, are encouraging: President Sargsyan's announcement last September, President Putin's state visit last December, Yerevan's recent recognition
of Crimea's reunification with Russia, and the more recent resignation of
the IMF-trained Prime Minister of Armenia are all unmistakable signs that official
Yerevan is slowly but surely putting the "complimentary" nonsense to rest. Serious political observers are already recognizing Armenia's emerging new foreign policy, and Western
propagandists are already lamenting.And it is also very encouraging to see an increase in Moscow's military activities in Armenia.

Recent events have proven - even to some of the most dense within Armenian society - that Armenia's rightful place is within the political, military and economic orbit of the Russian Federation. Recent events have proven beyond any doubt that the West continues to be firmly in bed with Turkish and Wahhabi Islamic interests due to the Western world's long term designs against Russia, Iran and pan-Arab nationalism. More-and-more Armenians are now recognizing the West as aggressors around the world. They should have recognized this many years ago, but better late than never.Due to the Anglo-American-Jewish agenda for
the Middle East, Syria has been turned into a bloody battlefield. The oldest Christian population in the
world has suffered terribly as a result and descendents of Armenian genocide survivors
are once again faced with being exiled from their homes by the very same enemy.

As expected, the big talking
ARF, which has significant assets throughout Lebanon and Syria, has
once more proven to be utterly incompetent and impotent. As expected, the million strong American-Armenian Diaspora has once more proven to be worthless. The situation in Syria has once again shown us all that a penny spent on the Diaspora is a penny wasted. Speaking
volumes about Armenian political illiteracy and self-destructive
behavior: Other than
"twitting" messages of concern, politely "informing" US officials (i.e. those behind
the war crimes in question) about what is going on in Syria and making
strong "statements", for the
American-Armenian community is it business as usual - and come April 24,
will we have the American-Armenian community's anal-warts once more bending-over with hope.

Where are the loud protests against Washington's criminal actions in Syria?

Where are the loud protests at the US embassy in Armenia? Where are the placards with biting slogans against President Barack Obama or the American empire? Where are all those vulgar protesters that were courageous enough to take to the streets against President Putin's state visit to Armenia last December? Where are all the assholes in the following picture? -

Haven't we seen a number of protests against Russia and President Putin
within Armenia in recent years (including one in the name of a criminally reckless
truck operator who had killed eighteen people in Russia)? We have
yet to see however a single protest at one of the largest CIA branches
in the world, the US embassy in Yerevan. We have seen armies of
journalists and political activists in Armenia reporting about the
perceived anti-Armenian policies of Russia... We even have whores trying to ban the airing of Russian television programming in Armenia... yet not a single
"independent" journalist or a rights advocate or a political activist seems willing to
express any form of criticism against the US or NATO.

I repeat: Not a single protest in front of the US embassy in Yerevan.

Why?

Perhaps because the US embassy is doing its best to keep Armenians in Yerevan HAPPY!!!

Yes! Armenians dancing like idiots, wrapping themselves in American flags, singing American songs and making merry - all for the US embassy's PR efforts in Armenia!

A politically aware, or a self-respecting human-being for that matter, would have refused to do
a US sanctioned psy-ops like the music video above -
especially in light of the fact that US embassies around the world are
fronts for the CIA and they push bloody imperial agendas, including in Armenia. Before it was shut
down, the US embassy in Syria laid down the very foundations of the
historic carnage we have been witnessing throughout Syria during the last three years. Similar accusations can
of course be made against US embassies in Serbia, Venezuela, Russia, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan,
Libya, Ukraine... Despite
the big happy face they put on it, the US embassy in Yerevan, one of
the largest in the
world, is in fact a monster in disguise and the nerdy/impotent looking
US ambassador in Yerevan is in fact a war criminal by default.

But the power of American pop culture is such that we have Armenians dancing like monkeys for
imperial officials who are currently conspiring against their homeland.

With
that said, the situation in Kessab, Syria may be a window of
opportunity if
Armenians put aside their victim mentalities, Western fetishes and material pursuits and exploit it properly.

Foremost, we must recognize that Kessab is in fact historic Armenia. The
territory of Kessab is the southern reaches of the Armenian Crusader Kingdom of Cilicia. Kessab Armenians actually live on historic Armenian lands. Taking into
consideration the Bashar Assad
government's desperation and Armenia's closeness to Russia, Yerevan
needs to draw on its assets to convince Moscow
and Damascus to allow Armenians some form of semi-autonomy within the region of Kessab as well as perhaps Latakia. But first, Yerevan needs to end its counterproductive
cooperation with NATO and transfer Armenian peacekeepers currently located in Kosovo and
Afghanistan into Syria.Moreover,
military experts from Armenia and Artsakh should also be taken to the
region to help Armenians there begin organizing
self-defense units. Armenians should also seek a role in the
maintenance and/or
protection of Russian military installations in the region.

Theoretically,
we have an opportunity today to resurrect portions of historic Kilikia
in the
north-western corner of Syria as a Russo-Armenian protectorate. This is a possibility today that needs to be explored.

To
this
effect, we need to end our wasteful and counterproductive efforts in an
anti-Armenian viper's
nest like Washington and begin thinking in this
direction. At the very least, the situation in Syria is yet another
opportunity to finally convince our sheeple that the Diaspora is a dead end (most times figuratively, and as Kessab has recently shown, sometimes
literally). All self-respecting Armenians need to think about
repatriation to the Armenian homeland.

In closing, I'd like to remind the reader once more that on
the eve of the one hundredth anniversary of the First World War, the world is once again being attacked by corrosive ideological
movements formulated and promoted in Western lands. This is not only Russia's fight - this is humanity's fight.
Russia's fight is Armenia's fight. This is indeed a fight between good and evil, and we are on the side of good. The Russian state today is the world's last major cradle for conservatism, apostolic Christianity, classical European civilization and the last front against gay marriage, ultra-liberalism, multiculturalism, interracialism, atheism and genetically modified foods.

I continue to hope that my next blog commentary will not have to be
about a European war. I continue to pray for peace - but I also continue to hope that Kremlin
officials are getting their big guns ready just in case peace proves elusive. We are indeed living in historic times. The seeds sown today will bare fruit in the future. I feel privileged to have witnessed the
historic reunification of Crimea to the Russian Motherland and I now look forward to witnessing the reunification of Artsakh to the Armenian homeland.

With great pleasure I now present to you Zoravar's exclusive report.

Arevordi

April, 2014

***

The
East-West Balance and the Strategic Importance of Crimea

Russian Army in Crimea

On 9
August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed acting Prime Minister of the
Government of the Russian Federation by President Yeltsin who also announced
that he wanted to see Putin as his successor. Less than 3 weeks later - on the
26th of August 1999 - the Second Chechen War was launched by the
Russian Army. That military campaign was the beginning of a new chapter in the
book of Contemporary Military History of the World.

But
first, let me get back to a little bit of History. With the dissolution of the
Soviet Union 1991, Russia was brought to its knees. During the decade following
that historic “Cold War victory” of the West over Communism, Russia experienced
a plethora of problems ranging from financial to political and from social to
demographic. The country’s economy was in a mess, mafia and oligarchs were
flourishing, corruption was everywhere, poverty and unemployment were on the
rise, patriotism and morale were at their lowest. What else can I mention?
Tanks had fired on the parliament building in Moscow and Chechnya was given
de-facto independence right after the first Chechen War. How much worse could
it get for Russia? Well, the Western advisors with IMF loans were working on it
…while Western leaders were unleashing their armies to smash the remaining of
Russia’s allies, friends and clients like Serbia and Iraq.

Kamov Ka-52 gunship is reported to have been deployed to Crimea at the beginning of April

I
remember with bitterness the days when the demoralized soldiers of the Russian
army could not defeat armed Chechen gangs during the First Chechen War that lasted from late 1994 to the middle of 1996. Fresh
out of the nasty Afghan conflict and facing the chaotic aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Army was using the wrong tactics
and the wrong equipment to fight an unpopular war the Russian nation was not prepared for.

Fast
forward to the Second Chechen War. The reader might wonder about the reason I
am attaching so much importance to this particular conflict. Well, it is the
way this war started that is most significant. Allow me to explain: The Second
Chechen War was initiated in response to the invasion of
the Dagestan region of the Russian Federation by the Chechen gangs… Just like the August, 2008
Five-Day War which was initiated in response to Georgia’s
invasion of South Ossetia... and just like the recent Crimea intervention which
also was initiated in response to the violent takeover of
administration in Kiev and repression of Russian speakers in Ukraine.By now,
the leaders of the Western powers should understand that if given a reason, a
pretext or a justification, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will not blink and he
will seize and use the opportunity to its fullest.

Sukhoi Su-35 air superiority fighter has recently entered service in the Far-East Military district

Appearances
and tactics in the above conflicts are also noteworthy. During the Second Chechen War, Russian soldiers looked not much different from our own Armenian
freedom fighters during the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict: Ragtag, mismatched uniforms and
even personal sport shoes instead of army boots. The Russian progress on the ground
was slow because of the cautious tactics used to minimize losses to Russian troops. During the
August, 2008 Georgia war, the Russians looked only slightly better. Soldiers within
the same military units could be seen wearing different uniforms, but the tactics were
a whole new ball game: Daring dashes through Georgian lines, audacious beach
landings and pinpoint air and missile strikes on key installations caused the collapse of all
Georgian resistance in a matter of days. And, finally, we have the well-oiled and
thoroughly rehearsed war machine that commandeered the Crimean peninsula and reversed the whole
military situation essentially overnight - with highly disciplined soldiers with modern arms and great looking uniforms - not having
to fire a single shot in anger.

Yes,
the world is no longer unipolar. There are now two super-powers once again and the previously much
discussed - but dormant for two decades - subject of Military
Balance is back in full fashion. This blog is not a military one, so I will avoid
boring the readers with a detailed military analysis and go straight to the
conclusions:

Nuclear Conflict

The
Balance of Terror has always been intact and the Mutual Assured Destruction
(MAD) concept was never in doubt. Even during Russia’s worst years, when the
Army, its equipment and the military industry were rapidly decaying, Yeltsin's administration
managed to still keep the Nuclear Strategic Forces credible. More recently, the
Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces were the first branch of the Armed Forces that
went (and are still going through) modernization. During the last few years the
road mobile TOPOL Intercontinental Ballistic missiles were supplemented by more
modern TOPOL-M versions which in turn are being replaced by the newer YARS. New
rail-mobile missiles and super-heavy class silo based missiles are being
developed. The construction of 8 BOREI class submarines that can each carry 16
newly introduced BULAVA intercontinental missiles was initiated. 2 of the boats
are already in service, the rest are in construction and will replace the older
Soviet era DELTA class subs. The newer ballistic missiles, both land and sea
launched, have features that make them harder to intercept by US anti-missile
systems.

Mobile TOPOL Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (10,000 km range)

While Russia was modernizing its nuclear deterrent, the USA was doing
nothing… well, they were fighting the so-called “War on Terror”!The USA’s nuclear
deterrent is made up of Cold-War era ballistic missiles. Their systems date
back to the eighties and even before! Their OHIO class nuclear subs that they
rely so much on have an average age of 25 years! This old US arsenal is
increasingly vulnerable to the soon to materialize Russian missile defense
system which will include the S-500 air and space defense complex. Sooner or
later, the Obama administration or the next president of the USA will have to
commit huge finances to replace and modernize their Strategic Forces of
America. And considering the pathway of military contracts in that country with
their inexplicable delays and massive cost overruns due to corruption and
politics, it is going to cost the USA hundreds of billions (if not trillions)
to revamp that branch of their Armed Forces. It will be a quite a challenge for
them considering that not a single new Ballistic missile was designed in the
USA for decades and that most of the expertise has been lost.

Conventional Conflict
Close to Russia’s Borders

A
conventional attack on Russia is unthinkable as it will quickly escalade into a
nuclear exchange. Having said that, there is always the possibility of having a
limited war in a country neighboring Russia. One can think of Ukraine or
Georgia as being good example where the USA or NATO can dispatch forces to
confront Russia in a conventional shootout without resorting to nuclear
arsenals. Back in 1999, Yeltsin could not defend Serbia properly. All he could
do was to send a contingent of troops to capture the Pristina airport, and that
was after the bombing of Serbia by NATO warplanes. That was at a
time when Russian was weak. In 2008 (Georgia) and in 2014 (Crimea), the roles
were reversed and it was the West that was powerless. In short, a
rejuvenated Russia cannot be beaten at or near its borders for two main
reasons:

Tactical
and logistics:
Proximity to Russia means easier moving of troops and equipment , quicker
reactions to changes on the battlefield, shorter lines of communication, better
knowledge of the area and in many cases having friendly local populations on
the ground etc. etc. Consider the logistical nightmares and costs the USA
is/was going through when resupplying their troops in Afghanistan for example.
Everything from tanks to thanksgiving turkey dinners has to be airlifted! At or
near its borders, Russia enjoys the advantage of having troops nearby or even
already on the ground. NATO will have to go through great lengths to get
sufficient units there. By the time they get there, it will be too late!

Commitment: It is a matter of survival. A conflict at or near
Russia’s borders will be far more important for the Russians than to their
opponents. The Russian government, population and soldiers will be ready to go
to greater lengths and sacrifice more just to win it. Russia’s history is proof
of that point. The level of commitment of NATO and their population is just not
up to that level. The stakes will just be not that high for them.

Conventional Conflict Far
from Russia’s Borders

To
be able to conduct a successful military operation far from one’s homeland, a
strategic airlift capability and more importantly a strong Navy are a must.
Having large, well equipped and trained armies is meaningless if you can’t get
them where they are needed. For example, Britain built a strong navy and then
became an empire, not vice-versa.

New Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber have been based in the Voronezh (facing West) and southern areas (facing Turkey)

Venturing
on expeditions around the world is the West’s forte. The Kremlin’s capabilities
in doing the same are limited. I must say that even the Soviet Union lacked in
this field. Currently, Russia does have very capable airborne units that can be
deployed anywhere within a few thousand kilometers of the homeland. It also has
a number of medium and small sized landing ships that can do the same. Incidentally,
some of the Black Sea stationed landing ships are currently very busy
delivering military equipment to the Government forces in Syria (this
constant stream of ships sailing back and forth to Latakia and Tartus is
affectionately called “Syria Express”). Russia can conduct overseas operations
as long as they are not too distant (like Syria) or the scope of operation is
not too big. But countering the American militarily might in far distant places
like Africa, South Asia or Latin America simply cannot be contemplated.

Aircraft
carriers are great tools to bully other countries out of their natural
resources. Since the Second World War, NATO in general and the USA in
particular have successfully used them in places ranging from Grenada to Libya and
from the Falklands to Iraq. NATO can deploy more than a dozen such carriers
while Russia has just one. Another important asset for overseas operations is
amphibious landing ships that can carry large amounts of troops, combat
vehicles and supplies anywhere in the world. It is the US Marines that are
dominant in that field. They have at their disposal a large fleet of ships that
can carry thousands of Marines each. Russia has fewer and smaller ships that
can each carry no more than a few hundred soldiers. In short, in a hypothetical
war where the US is for example invading a distant ally of Russia (like
Venezuela), there is little that the Kremlin will be able to do.

Fifth Generation Sukhoi PAK-FA stealth fighter is expected to enter service during 2016

The
two Mistral class large amphibious assault ships that are currently built in
France under a special deal made between France and Russia are to remedy (at
least partly) for Russia’s deficiency in conducting large scale and long range
military operations anywhere on the planet. The main role of Russia’s (and the
Soviet Union’s) Navy is and traditionally has always been to defend the country
from sea attacks. It is the submarines that are the main offensive components
of the Russian Navy. That elite component of the Navy is the one that can fight
Russia’s foes on the oceans.

Russia’s Rearmament
Program

The
degradation of the huge military-industrial complex of the USSR started with
Gorbachev’s Perestroika initiative. Weapon making factories were told to look
also into civilian production. This degradation process was of course greatly
accelerated with the economic and political collapse of that country. Russia
inherited the lion’s share of the factories, but there were very few orders
from the Defense Ministry for much of the 1990s. Many defense related
enterprises had to shut down, specialists and skilled workers were laid-off.
The surviving companies relied on whatever domestic and export orders they were
getting plus any civilian related work they could do.

Rare photo of the Cruise missile version of the ISKANDER. The ballistic missile version is more commonly seen

With
the improvement of Russia’s economy during the 20th century, the
Military budget was increased every year. Accordingly, new weapons development
and acquisition was initiated. It was a very slow process not because of
finances, but because factories lacked skilled workers or modern machinery. The
rearmament process received a significant boost right after the 2008 war with
Georgia. Under Putin’s administration, the State Defense Order increased many
fold in size. The current grandiose plan is to have 70% of the armed forces
reequipped with modern weaponry by 2020. The re-equipment of some branches of
the forces is well underway. As mentioned earlier in this article, the
Strategic forces were given priority. Currently, bases and barracks are being
renovated and new equipment including fighter jets, attack helicopters,
frigates, submarines, air defense systems and other “shiny toys” are being
inducted into the Armed Forces at an increasingly faster rate. Even the
uniforms and boots are new. The coming few years will reveal entirely new tank
and armored vehicle designs, artillery, guided and unguided rocket systems etc.
etc.

The New Mil- Mi-28 gunship is now the backbone of attack helicopter units in the South and Caucasus areas

What
are the US and EU doing against all that. Year after year, we have been seeing
the military budgets of EU nations being cut down in size. Their armies are now
a shadow of what they used to be. For example the once mighty Royal Navy is now
smaller than the Indian Navy…Oh the irony! At $600 Billion a year, the US
military budget remains by far the largest in the world. But, in reality, that
huge sum is not reflected on what we see on the ground. The US Navy is now
about half the size it was during the Cold War. Most of the Pentagon’s assets
(tanks, fighter jets, missiles etc.) are getting long in the tooth and require
a massive replacement program that will be exorbitant and unaffordable. What
happened? It all screams corruption and mismanagement. True, but let’s also
blame the Bush and Obama administrations for investing so much in unmanned
drones, mine resistant vehicle and other systems to fight the “Global War on
Terror” that they forgot to properly look after the traditional main components
of their national defense: The Army, Navy and Air Force.

Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber

Starting
from next year, I would like to see the faces of the US Generals and Admirals
on the traditional 9th of May victory day parades when the next
generation of Russian weaponry like the ARMATA tank, KURGANETS fighting
vehicle, BOOMERANG armored personnel carrier, TYPHOON armored truck, VOLK
vehicle for the airborne, KOALITSYA artillery, TORNADO-S multiple rocket
system, S-500 air-space defense system and many other new systems will be
showing up on Moscow’s Red Square.

The Tactical and
Strategic Significance of Crimea

Slightly
smaller than the Republic of Armenia, the Crimean peninsula is connected to the
mainland only by the narrow Perekop isthmus. One doesn’t need to have a
military background to immediately realize the immense strategic importance of
that piece of real estate. Surrounded by water and located almost centrally in
the Black Sea, it is an easily defendable fortress with power-projection
potential to the entire Black Sea and surrounding lands. The Crimean peninsula
is sort of an unsinkable gigantic aircraft carrier. I fully expect the Kremlin
to transform it into a mighty fortress that will alter the military balance and
the Geopolitics of the entire region. Backed by online videos, news reports
already indicate the deployment of various BASTION and BAL anti-ship missile
systems as well as PANTSIR-S air defense complexes. I foresee the Russians
moving in S-400 and ISKANDER missiles as well. Search, early warning radar and
other surveillance means will find a good home there too.

Modernized Ilyushin/Beriev
A-50 Early warning (AWACS) plane

From
a purely defensive point of view: The Crimea provides protection (flank cover) to Southern
parts of Russia including the Caucasus. Being on the south side of Ukraine, it
sandwiches that nation between itself and Belarus, making another Operation
Barbarossa style invasion of the Russian Motherland much more risky because the
attacking forces will be exposed to simultaneous flank attacks from North and
South. With the potent weapon systems deployed there, the Black Sea can be
turned into a no-fly and no-sail zone for any opponent in a future conflict
with Russia. The maps below indicate the coverage of some defensive systems
when (hypothetically) deployed in the vicinity of Sevastopol.Note
that the S-400 air defense system uses a number of surface to air missiles
types, the longest ranged one is the 40N6 with 400km zone of destruction. For
the BASTION anti-ship missile, I used the 300 km maximum range of the export
version. The Russian version is said to go 500 km and beyond.

From
an offensive and/or power projection point of view: The main base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is the well
sheltered port of Sevastopol which is also equipped with all the means to
service, maintain and repair a large fleet. That port supports the
Mediterranean deployed squadron of ships whose current main role is to
replenish the Syrian Army. Thus far, the warships were sailing from Sevastopol,
but were forced to stop in and pick up the Syria-destined supplies from the
smaller Novorossisk Naval Base in Russia itself. From now on, everything can be
done more efficiently and quickly directly from Sevastopol.

Dubbed "Aircraft Carrier Killer", the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet is the Sevastopol (Crimea) based cruiser MOSKVA

There
is no doubt in my mind that Russia will deploy ISKANDER complexes with both
ballistic and winged (cruise) types of missiles in Crimea. The INF treaty
between Russia and the USA currently limits the maximum range of these
land-based systems to 500 km. Depending on how the East-West relations develop
in the coming months, Russia may unilaterally decide to withdraw from the above
disadvantageous treaty that Mikhael Gorbachev signed at that time. Accordingly,
the self-imposed limits on the missiles will be removed. The map below
indicates the current coverage of the ISKANDER system when launched from
the Sevastopol area. The same map also shows the nominal radius of action of a
fully loaded SUKHOI Su-30SM fighter bomber. Of course, that radius can be
expended with in-flight refueling or by using a smaller bomb-load. This type of
aircraft is the most likely candidate to reinforce Crimean defenses.
Another candidate can be the heavier Su-34 dedicated attack fighter which can
fly 50% further… Reports are emerging Tu-22M BACKFIRE medium bombers may be
brought back to the Crimea as well. These bombers have been absent from the
area since the Cold War ended.

Even
beyond: The Strategic bombers of
the Russian Air Force (Tu-95 BEAR and Tu-160 BLACKJACK) can take off from their
airbases deep in Russia, fly to the Crimean airspace and fire their loads of
3000 km range Kh-555 and 5000 km range Kh-101 and 102 cruise missiles from the
safety of the defenses of the peninsula. Of course they could have done that
from South Russia, but the Crimean territory gives them that extra few hundred
kilometers coverage.

Recently introduced, new generation BOREI class Nuclear Submarine

Before
the recent events in Ukraine, Russia’s rearmament plans encompassed the
modernization of the elderly Black Sea Fleet. Six brand new frigates and six
new submarines were ordered a few years ago and are in various stages of
construction. The first submarine will enter service late this year to
supplement the single unit that is in service in the Black Sea. The first
frigate will come on board soon after. These fresh and modern vessels carry
ONYX anti-ship missiles as well as land attack KLUB missiles. Being ship
deployed, these cruise missiles are not limited by the above mentioned INF
treaty. The domestic versions of the KLUB missile are estimated to have ranges
of up to 2000 km.

I
believe that what I explained above is sufficient for the reader to understand
the importance of the Crimean peninsula for Russia in military terms and that
there is no need to elaborate the military details any further.

Geopolitical Impact

From
the very first days of this blog, its owner has repeatedly stressed the
importance of seeing and accepting the fact that Russia has risen and has
become the alpha and omega of the Caucasus. With recent events
in Ukraine and the return of Crimea to the Russian Motherland, I am certain he
will gladly upgrade that status to: “Russia is now the alpha and the omega
of the entire Black Sea region”.

The
Kremlin skilfully exploited the EuroMaidan freak show and firmly placed Russia
in the winner’s seat. Irrespective of how the situation develops - whether things
escalate or de-escalate in Ukraine in the future - Russia will come out on top.
The various sanctions that the West is imposing on Russia are just a reflection
of their impotence in the situation that they created themselves. The Kremlin’s
Grossmeisters proved to be of a far superior caliber than the west’s
shortsighted simpletons represented by the likes of John McCain and Victoria
Neuland.

The ROPUCHA class landing ships are common in the "Syria Express" convoys delivering arms and supplies to the Syrian
Army

With
the Crimean peninsula firmly secured, the already increasing influence of a
rising Russia is going to get a healthy boost. I can vision the already growing
Russian influence in the Eastern Mediterranean (Syria and Egypt) and would love
to see positive developments for countries that were the victims of the West’s
policies in Southern Europe, the Balkans and the Adriatic (Greece, Macedonia,
etc.). I can’t stop thinking of the coerced or forcefully subjugated nation
like Bulgaria and Serbia…

Crimea and Armenia

In
the previous Ukraine related articles in this blog, Arevordi has repeatedly
explained and stressed the fact that a victory for Russia is a victory for
Armenia. For the last part of this article, I feel compelled to demonstrate
the relevance of that statement in military terms.

Our
arch enemies are Turks and Azeris. These constitute a mortal danger to
the very existence of Armenia as a nation-state. With the political, moral and
strategic defeat of the Anglo-American agenda in Ukraine and the re-integration
of Crimea within the Russian Federation, one of the main losers ends up being
Turkey. No, I am not talking about the sociopolitical disappointments of Crimean Tatars, I
am talking from a military-strategic point of view.

The MiG-35 is a heavily modified and modernized version of the MiG-29

With
the help of Map-3 illustrated above, I have already demonstrated the
vulnerability of Turkey to air and missile strikes from Crimea. Now let us
combine that threat to the expected deployment of ISKANDER systems in Armenia
by Russia’s 102nd Army base as well as by Armenia’s own missile
forces (replacing or supplementing the existing SCUD missiles). The map below
indicates the coverage of ISKANDER missiles in their current treaty limited
(maximum 500 km) range deployed in Sevastopol (Crimea) and Gyumri (Armenia).
Note that the S-300 PMU2 air defense systems deployed near Baku and the Chinese
made air defense systems recently ordered by Turkey have little chance of
stopping the current and future variants of the ISKANDER missiles which were
developed with air defense penetration features.

To
conclude, I would like to express my gratitude to foul-mouthed Victory Neuland
and cohorts for making the dream-come-true re-integration of Crimea into the
Russian Federation possible, thus making an immense contribution to the
establishment of Pax Russicana, the kind of peace and security that this
very sensitive area of the planet truly deserves and desperately needs.

Zoravar

***

David Ignatius: Russian Military Delivers a Striking Lesson in Crimea

From the
photographs we’ve seen of the Russian special operations, or Spetsnaz,
troops that intervened in Crimea, several things are obvious: They are
secretive, moving without insignia and often covering their faces;
they’re disciplined and they’re decisive. The diplomatic response to the Russian intervention is
continuing. But Pentagon officials are beginning to assess the military
“lessons learned.” The bottom line is that Russia’s move into Crimea was
a study in the speedy deployment of special operations forces to
achieve a limited objective.

“What has been most striking to me so far has been the apparent
levels of discipline, training and cooperation among the Russian
forces,” noted Paul Saunders, executive director of the Center for the
National Interest, in an interview this week with the military blog War on the Rocks. The
Russians deployed quickly in the hours surrounding reports of their
initial movement on Feb. 26. Two days later, when President Obama warned
that there would be “costs” for invading Crimea, the Russian forces
were already in place and the intervention was nearly a fait accompli.

The
Russians are thought to have had roughly 15,000 troops in Crimea when
the crisis began, and quickly added about another 5,000, mostly special
operations troops. The Russians are allowed up to 25,000 military
personnel in Crimea under their 30-year lease of the Black Sea naval
base at Sevastopol. Military analysts note some interesting
characteristics of the Russian deployment: President Vladimir Putin, a
former KGB lieutenant colonel, chose something closer to a paramilitary
“covert action” than a normal military attack. Because the troops didn’t
have Russian insignia, there was a thin veil of deniability, which the
Russians exploited.

At a news conference March 4, Putin denied that Russian troops had invaded, despite photographic evidence to the contrary. “You can go to a store and buy a uniform,” insisted Putin. This “deniability” was
maintained by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who said
March 5 it was “complete nonsense” that Russian troops had invaded Crimea and that
he had “no idea” how Russian military vehicles had gotten there.

These
bland denials of reality were useful in several ways: They maintained a
fig leaf of legitimacy for an illegal intervention; they allowed Russia
a chance (not yet taken) to de-escalate an operation that hadn’t
officially been acknowledged; and they distanced Putin in case things
went badly and Ukrainians were killed.

Putin also showed a notable willingness to take risks. So far, there has been almost no bloodshed between Russians and Ukrainians,
but Putin couldn’t have known this when he began. That’s why the
precision and discipline of Russian forces were crucial. Their
professionalism reduced the risk of an incident that could have spiraled
out of control. Finally, Putin prepared a rationale for his intervention — along with the attendant propaganda.
He insisted he was acting to protect Russian citizens and Russian
speakers in Crimea. His troops were welcomed by a generally supportive
Crimean population, and his action was lauded back home. This model
suggests that Putin might be prepared to move, similarly, to protect
Russians in neighboring countries, such as eastern Ukraine or the Transnistria region of Moldova.

Analysts
think Putin would be less likely to move against neighboring states,
such as Lithuania and Latvia, that have significant Russian-speaking
populations but that are NATO members. Such operations would require far
more force — and would test NATO’s “Article 5” commitment to U.S.-led
mutual defense, a risk that is probably greater than Putin is willing to
tolerate. The well-organized Crimea operation also suggests
improvement in the quality and training of the Russian military. Their
troops had operated with far less precision a decade ago in Chechnya and in the 2008 invasion of Georgia. A botched attempt to free 850 hostages in a Moscow theater in 2002 resulted in the deaths of 130 of the captives.

Russia evidently has been getting results for increased spending on its military: The 2012 edition of an annual survey by the International Institute for Strategic Studies
estimated that Russia would spend 3.78 percent of its GDP on defense in
2013, by far the highest amount in more than a decade. Aging or
incompetent Russian officers have been purged as part of a modernization
campaign. This Russian army, in short, is not the one that
proved so feeble in Afghanistan. It is well-trained and stealthy and
effectively uses a “small footprint.” And Putin clearly wasn’t deterred
by NATO military moves that signaled a commitment to protect member
states — but didn’t convey a willingness to check Russian black
operations in a friendly, neighboring region.

Late on 25 March, the last Ukrainian warship blockaded in its port on
Crimea's west coast surrendered to Russian forces, completing just over
three weeks of operations to wrest the strategic peninsula from Kiev's
control.

This whirlwind campaign seems to herald a new sophistication in how
Russian commanders conduct military operations. The most distinctive
feature of the Russian operation was its emphasis on economy of effort.
Unlike previous interventions in Afghanistan in the Soviet era, or
Chechnya and Georgia more recently, where Russian commanders relied on
mass employment of tanks and artillery, the Crimea intervention featured
fewer than 10,000 assault troops lined up against 16,000 Ukrainian
military personnel. The heaviest fighting vehicle employed by the
Russians against the Ukrainians was the wheeled BTR-80 armoured
personnel carrier (APC).

Once Russian troops had moved to blockade Ukrainian military
personnel in their bases, psychological warfare, internet/media
propaganda, intimidation, and bribery were their main weapons to
undermine their opponents' will to resist, rather than overwhelming
firepower. Russian troops also displayed considerably discipline and
patience during this phase. In addition, they appeared well equipped,
boasting new personnel equipment, body armour, and light wheeled
armoured vehicles.

This novel approach was necessitated by Russian President Vladimir
Putin's need for the operation to be launched within a tight timeframe
after the fall of the pro-Moscow regime in Kiev on 27 February.

Although the operation may have been planned for many months, there
was insufficient time to mobilise a larger force. Russian commanders had
to make do with naval infantry from the Black Sea Fleet already based
in Crimea, backed up by a couple of battalions of airborne troops and
Spetsnaz commandos flown onto the peninsula. Economy of force also
fitted the campaign's political narrative: that this was a mission to
protect Crimea's Russian-speaking population rather than an invasion.

In just over three weeks, the will of the Ukrainian forces in Crimea
was broken and all 190 of their bases had surrendered with barely a shot
being fired by their defenders. However, even if some Ukrainian heavy
armour was present in Crimea, many of the Ukrainian forces were naval
and administrative personnel rather than combat troops. Organised
military resistance was never a serious prospect. Instead of achieving a
simple military triumph on the battlefield, the Russian armed forces
facilitated a political and psychological victory.

What now?

In the wake of his success, there has been intense speculation about
President Putin's future intentions. In his 18 March victory speech
after the fall of Crimea, he laid out his underlying worldview. Russia's
loss of power and status at the end of the Cold War in 1989 was a
deliberate, generational humiliation at the hands of the West - and a
reason for hatred and apprehension.

For the Russian president, Ukraine's strategic importance to Russia
is the key issue. In Putin's view, Ukraine is the pivotal connector
between East and West. Control of Ukraine means control of the Black Sea
and unobstructed access to potentially sympathetic populations in
central Europe and the Balkans - in nations such as Bulgaria, Slovakia,
and Serbia - and the exercise of time honoured 'pan-slavism' with a view
to greater integration. These strategic perspectives appear to have
been largely lost to Western leaders.

Ukraine is sufficiently important that in 2004, the last time a split
from Russian control seemed likely, Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western
opposition and Orange Revolution leader and later president, was nearly
fatally poisoned and permanently disfigured by the use of dioxin. In any
case, the Kremlin sees a 'colour revolution', heralding liberal
democracy amongst Slavonic people, as threatening and utterly
unacceptable.

A significant effect of the Crimea campaign has been to further test
NATO and EU resolve. Russian leaders tend to think in larger pictures
than their Western counterparts. 'Atlanticists' are likely to consider
individual nations or small groups of countries, threats to them, and
their specific importance, without interconnecting them.

Russian analysts evaluate - and have whole branches of study devoted
to - the Black Sea-Baltic region as a strategic territory and subject in
itself. Russia has generally controlled these areas between Russia
proper and foreign countries, referred to in a wider context as the
'near abroad'.

Speculation has shifted to Moldova - and its adjacent, unrecognised
Russian-speaking enclave of Transnistria or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian
Republic (PMR) - as the next test of Western resolve in the face of
possible intervention by Putin. A potential justification or pretext for
a Russian incursion here is the small self-declared republic's wish to
become part of Russia and the disputed presence of a battalion of 400
Russian peace-keeping troops.

On 25 March, Russia announced the start of territorial defence exercises in Transnistria, which Moldovan sources described to IHS Jane's on the same day as of concern even if anticipated. Although part of NATO and the EU, the Baltic States are the northern
end of the Black Sea-Baltic space and are vulnerable. The disapproving
tone of some Russian rhetoric suggests they exist under sufferance.

From the Russian Air Assault Division base at Pskov near the
Latvian-Estonian border, forces could - from a near standing start - cut
off Estonia from the rest of the EU in less than 40 minutes, according
to a former Russian air assault division commander.

The same could be done along the 80 km Polish-Lithuanian border,
which runs between Belarus and the Russian Baltic enclave of
Kaliningrad. In both cases, one or all the Baltic States could be
enclosed, controlled, and separated from the rest of Europe. In the
Baltic, eastern Ukraine, and Moldova-Transnistria Russian military units
are in place, available for further exploitation if President Putin so
desires.

Over the past few years, NATO countries have helped Russia revolutionize
its armed forces. Now questions are arising about a German defense
contractor that trained the Russian military.

The world was shocked when Russian special operations forces invaded
Crimea with advanced technology, drastically improved operations, and
with so much operational security that even agencies in the U.S.
intelligence community didn’t see it coming.
In Washington, government and congressional leaders are wondering how
the Russian special operations forces got so good, so fast, without
anyone noticing. Some are wondering how much help Russia had from the
West.

In 2011, for example, the German defense contractor Rheinmetall signed a $140 million contract
to build a combat simulation training center in Mulino, in southwest
Russia, that would train 30,000 Russian combat troops per year. While
the facility wasn't officially scheduled to be completed until later
this year, U.S. officials believe that Germany has been training Russian
forces for years.

Rheinmetall defended the project even after the invasion of Crimea, up until the German government finally shut it down late last month.
But many tracking the issue within the U.S. government were not happy
with Germany's handling of the Russian contract, and worry that some of
the training may have gone to the kind of special operations forces now
operating in and around Ukraine.

“It’s unfortunate that German
companies were directly supporting and training Russia’s military even
during the attacks against Ukraine,” one senior Senate aide told The
Daily Beast. “The U.S. government should call on our NATO allies to
suspend all military connections with Russia at this point, until the
Russians leave Ukraine, including Crimea.”

According to the Congressional Research Service,
Rheinmetall’s partner in the deal was the Russian state-owned
Oboronservis (“Defense Service”) firm. The training center, modeled
after one used by the German Bundeswehr, was to be “the most advanced
system of its kind worldwide.” Reinmetall saw the contract as a
precursor to several more projects “in light of the plans to modernize
the equipment of the Russian armed forces.”

U.S. officials, now
looking back, are privately expressing anger and frustration about the
German work with the Russian military. While definitive proof is hard to
come by, these officials look at the radical upgrade of Moscow’s
forces–especially its special operations forces–experienced since they
last saw major action in 2008's invasion of Georgia. The U.S. officials
believe that some of the German training over the last few years was
given to the GRU Spetsnaz, the special operations forces that moved
unmarked into Crimea and who can now be found stirring up trouble in eastern Ukraine.

“People are pissed,” one U.S. intelligence official told The Daily
Beast. “The chatter inside the Pentagon is that the training they were
providing was going to Spetznaz.”

To the Congressional Research Service, “Rheinmetall’s construction of
an army training center could be viewed in the context of the broader
bilateral defense cooperation between Germany and Russia,” the service
writes in its report. “The German… government’s approval of the
contract to construct a training center also appears to be in line with
long-standing German policy to promote military training and joint
exercises with partner countries.”

But some on Capitol Hill see the Rheimetall contract as only one
example of the folly of several NATO countries that rushed to sign
lucrative defense contracts with Russia after President Obama declared a
new “reset” policy with the Russian Federation. Lawmakers have tried to
halt the French sale of the Mistral, an amphibious warship, to
the Russian Navy. Some are also unhappy about the Italian sale of Lynx
armored personnel carriers to Russia.

A Senate aide said that one of Rheinmetall’s contributions was to help the Russian army and GRU Spetznaz upgrade their gear. Reports show
that the Russian military units both inside Ukraine and amassed on its
eastern border are sporting brand new communications equipment, body
armor, personal weapons, and ammunition. Taken together, it gives them a
huge tactical advantage over the beleaguered Ukrainian armed forces.

Top defense officials are now acknowledging that Russia’s military
has been revolutionized in recent years. This month, Vice Admiral Frank
Pandolfe, the director for strategic plans and policy for the military’s
joint chiefs of staff, told Congress in open testimony that in recent
years Russia has created regional commands that “coordinate and
synchronize planning, joint service integration, force movement,
intelligence support, and the tactical employment of units” in what he
deemed “snap exercises,” or military training missions that can be
ordered at a moment’s notice.

In the testimony, Pandolfe also said Russia has placed greater
emphasis on the use of Special Operations Forces as well as information
and cyber warfare. Experts said that Russian military doctrine was
dramatically updated in the past few years and clearly set out Russia’s
plans for modernization and a focus on highly trained rapid reaction
special forces. But in the West, the papers were not well read, much
less understood.

The Russians also changed their doctrine to
reflect that they viewed the threat as not coming from a conventional
war, but from the need to protect Russian populations in unstable states
facing what they deemed to be Western aggression.

“This wasn’t
just about implementing lessons learned from [the 2008 invasion of]
Georgia, it was about giving them a basis for a different kind of
operations,” said Fiona Hill, a former top intelligence official on
Russia, now with the Brookings Institution. “We should have been paying
more attention to this. There have been these signals for a long time,
but we have been misreading them.”

Western and NATO countries believed they could tie Russia into
greater military cooperation through engagement, but now have realized
that Russian was probably never really interested in that. The Russian
military is now organized to respond to conflicts caused by such things
as popular revolutions, political crises, and domestic insurgencies.

“Everyone was looking for a way to cooperate with the Russian
military and rushed to find ways to do it, including us,” said Hill.
“Whatever we do now, we have to be mindful that the Russians have been
preparing for something else.”

Andranik Migranyan, a past member
of Russia’s Presidential Council and currently an adviser to the
Vladimir Putin administration, told reporters that ever since the
Georgia war, Russia has been spending to radically upgrade its military,
but that the West has only itself to blame for not following along.

“We have new armament, new army, new training,” he said. “It’s very strange you are not following what’s happening.”

Secretary of State John Kerry has accused Russia
of behaving in a “19th-century fashion” because of its annexation of
Crimea. But Western experts who have followed the success of Russian
forces in carrying out President Vladimir V. Putin’s policy in Crimea and eastern Ukraine
have come to a different conclusion about Russian military strategy.
They see a military disparaged for its decline since the fall of the
Soviet Union skillfully employing 21st-century tactics that combine cyberwarfare,
an energetic information campaign and the use of highly trained special
operation troops to seize the initiative from the West.

“It
is a significant shift in how Russian ground forces approach a
problem,” said James G. Stavridis, the retired admiral and former NATO
commander. “They have played their hand of cards with finesse.”

The
abilities the Russian military has displayed are not only important to
the high-stakes drama in Ukraine, they also have implications for the
security of Moldova, Georgia, Central Asian nations and even the Central
Europe nations that are members of NATO. The
dexterity with which the Russians have operated in Ukraine is a far cry
from the bludgeoning artillery, airstrikes and surface-to-surface
missiles used to retake Grozny, the Chechen capital, from Chechen
separatists in 2000. In that conflict, the notion of avoiding collateral
damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure appeared to be alien.

Since
then Russia has sought to develop more effective ways of projecting
power in the “near abroad,” the non-Russian nations that emerged from
the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has tried to upgrade its military,
giving priority to its special forces, airborne and naval infantry —
“rapid reaction” abilities that were “road tested” in Crimea, according
to Roger McDermott, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. The
speedy success that Russia had in Crimea does not mean that the overall
quality of the Russian Army, made up mainly of conscripts and no match
for the high-tech American military, has been transformed.

“The
operation reveals very little about the current condition of the
Russian armed forces,” said Mr. McDermott. “Its real strength lay in
covert action combined with sound intelligence concerning the weakness
of the Kiev government and their will to respond militarily.”

Still,
Russia’s operations in Ukraine have been a swift meshing of hard and
soft power. The Obama administration, which once held out hope that Mr.
Putin would seek an “off ramp” from the pursuit of Crimea, has
repeatedly been forced to play catch-up after the Kremlin changed what
was happening on the ground. “It
is much more sophisticated, and it reflects the evolution of the
Russian military and of Russian training and thinking about operations
and strategy over the years,” said Stephen J. Blank, a former expert on
the Russian military at the United States Army War College who is a
senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.

For
its intervention in Crimea, the Russians used a so-called snap military
exercise to distract attention and hide their preparations. Then
specially trained troops, without identifying patches, moved quickly to
secure key installations. Once the operation was underway, the Russian
force cut telephone cables, jammed communications and used cyberwarfare
to cut off the Ukrainian military forces on the peninsula.

“They
disconnected the Ukrainian forces in Crimea from their command and
control,” the NATO commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, said in a recent interview. As
it cemented control, the Kremlin has employed an unrelenting media
campaign to reinforce its narrative that a Russian-abetted intervention
had been needed to rescue the Russian-speaking population from
right-wing extremists and chaos.

No
sooner had the Obama administration demanded that Russia pull back from
Crimea than the Kremlin raised the stakes by massing about 40,000
troops near Ukraine’s eastern frontier. Soon,
the Russians were sending small, well-equipped teams across the
Ukrainian border to seize government buildings that could be turned over
to sympathizers and local militias, American officials said. Police
stations and Interior Ministry buildings, which stored arms that could
be turned over to local supporters, were targeted.

“Because
they have some local support they can keep leveraging a very small
cadre of very good fighters and move forward,” said Daniel Goure, an
expert on the Russian military at the Lexington Institute, a policy
research group.

While
the Kremlin retains the option of mounting a large-scale intervention
in eastern Ukraine, the immediate purposes of the air and ground forces
massed near Ukraine appears to be to deter the Ukrainian military from
cracking down in the east and to dissuade the United States from
providing substantial military support. The
Kremlin has used its military deployment to buttress its diplomatic
strategy of insisting on an extensive degree of federalism in Ukraine,
one in which the eastern provinces would be largely autonomous and under
Moscow’s influence.

And
as Russians have flexed their muscles, the White House appears to have
refocused its demands. Crimea barely figured in the talks in Geneva that
involved Mr. Kerry and his counterparts from Russia, Ukraine and the
European Union.

The
Obama administration’s urgent goal is to persuade the Kremlin to
relinquish control over the government buildings in eastern Ukraine that
the American officials insist have been held by small teams of Russian
troops or pro-Russian separatists under Moscow’s influence. Despite the
focus on the combustible situation in eastern Ukraine, the joint
statement the diplomats issued in Geneva did not even mention the
presence of Russia’s 40,000 troops near the border, which President Obama has urged be withdrawn.

Military
experts say that the sort of strategy the Kremlin has employed in
Ukraine is likely to work best in areas in which there are pockets of
ethnic Russians to provide local support. The strategy is also easier to
carry out if it is done close to Russian territory, where a large and
intimidating force can be assembled and the Russian military can easily
supply special forces.

“It
can be used in the whole former Soviet space,” said Chris Donnelly, a
former top adviser at NATO, who added that Georgia, Moldova, Armenia,
Azerbaijan and the Central Asia states were “very vulnerable.”

“The
Baltic States are much less vulnerable, but there will still be
pressure on them and there will on Poland and Central Europe,” Mr.
Donnelly added.

Admiral
Stavridis agreed that Russia’s strategy would be most effective when
employed against a nation with a large number of sympathizers. But he
said that Russia’s deft use of cyberwarfare, special forces and
conventional troops was a development that NATO needed to study and
factor into its planning.

“In
all of those areas they have raised their game, and they have
integrated them quite capably,” he said. “And I think that has utility
no matter where you are operating in the world.”

An estimated 40,000 Russian troops are deployed on the Ukrainian border, poised to invade if the order comes from Moscow. These forces are part of a much larger military that has been modernizing its forces over the past several years.

Western estimates say the Russian Defense Ministry has between 800,000
and one million men under arms. These include strategic rocket forces as
well as the various uniformed services: air, air defense, ground and
naval. And there are various kinds of special forces, such as the
Spetsnaz belonging to Russia’s military intelligence or GRU. Stephen Blank, an expert on the Russian military at the American Foreign
Policy Council, said there are also paramilitary forces.

“The other forces belong to other ministries: the Ministry of the
Interior, which are the internal forces of the MVD. The FSB has forces -
that’s the intelligence [service],” said Blank. “There are border
troops and then there are paramilitaries like the Cossack formations. So
there are lots of people involved here, probably something like one
million men total in the regular armed forces, several hundred thousand
more in these auxiliaries of the MVD, FSB, Cossacks and so on.”

Russia learned lessons from 2008 war with Georgia

Ian Brzezinski, from the Atlantic Council, said the Russian government is spending a lot of money to modernize its armed forces.

“$750 billion between now and the next decade to replenish their
maritime fleet, replenish their air force to bring in fifth-generation
aircraft, even more sophisticated air missile defense systems. They
continue to robustly test and develop new ballistic missile capabilities
and they continue their modernization of their ground forces.”

Brzezinski and others say Russia’s effort to modernize its military was
prompted by poor performance in Moscow’s 2008, five-day war with Georgia
over two separatist regions.

“You may recall the pictures of drunk soldiers straggling in the rear,
trying to catch up to the frontline troops. And the fact that the
Russians had a bit of difficulty taking on the Georgians, which didn’t
put on that strong a defense - and they were able to press forward
simply by pure mass rather than skill.”

Russia modernizes its military

Experts say one reform was to make the Russian military more mobile,
better geared for rapid response and for local conflicts, rather than
with the massive Soviet-style army. Keir Giles, head of Conflict Studies Research Center
in Oxford, England, said during the Georgian war, coordination between
the different armed service branches was a problem for the Russians.

“They didn’t, for example, have the kind of embedded forward air
controllers with their ground units in order to actually communicate
with air power. So some of the air losses in the Georgia war were
actually shot down by their own side, by the Russians.”

New Russian military on display

Ian Brzezinski said the results of the reforms were on display during
Russia’s annexation last month of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

“You see the way they have been performing in Crimea, where you had
20,000 to 30,000 Russian troops fan across the peninsula,” he said.
"Pretty slick uniforms, well-maintained equipment, and real stunningly
or impressive discipline and communication silence, communications
discipline. They are certainly far more capable than they were six years
ago.”

Stephen Blank from the American Foreign Policy Council
said Russia used its forces “in an extraordinarily disciplined,
bloodless, swift way, in conjunction with information warfare against
Ukraine, saturation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine with Russian
propaganda, and the deployment of highly-trained, modernized combined
forces on the western strategic direction, to intimidate, divert and
immobilize NATO and the Ukrainian armed forces.”

Blank said members of the Russian military leadership believe that the
end of the Cold War was an American special operation to take down the
Soviet Union without firing a shot - and it succeeded. Blank said the
Russian military tried to do the same, with success, in Crimea.

For
two weeks, the mysteriously well-armed, professional gunmen known as
“green men” have seized Ukrainian government sites in town after town,
igniting a brush fire of separatist unrest across eastern Ukraine.
Strenuous denials from the Kremlin have closely followed each
accusation by Ukrainian officials that the world was witnessing a
stealthy invasion by Russian forces.

Now, photographs and descriptions
from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama administration on Sunday
suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian military and
intelligence forces — equipped in the same fashion as Russian special
operations troops involved in annexing the Crimea region in February.
Some of the men photographed in Ukraine have been identified in other
photos clearly taken among Russian troops in other settings.

And
Ukraine’s state security service has identified one Russian reported to
be active among the green men as Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, a Russian
military intelligence operative in his mid- to late 50s. He is said to
have a long résumé of undercover service with the Main Intelligence
Directorate of the Russian general staff, most recently in Crimea in
February and March and now in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of
Slovyansk.

“There has been broad unity in the international community about the connection between Russia
and some of the armed militants in eastern Ukraine, and the photos
presented by the Ukrainians last week only further confirm this, which
is why U.S. officials have continued to make that case,” Jen Psaki, the
State Department spokeswoman, said Sunday.

The
question of Russia’s role in eastern Ukraine has a critical bearing on
the agreement reached Thursday in Geneva among Russian, Ukrainian,
American and European diplomats to ease the crisis. American officials
have said that Russia would be held responsible for ensuring that the
Ukrainian government buildings were vacated, and that it could face new
sanctions if the terms were not met.

The
Kremlin insists that Russian forces are in no way involved, and that
Mr. Strelkov does not even exist, at least not as a Russian operative
sent to Ukraine with orders to stir up trouble. “It’s all nonsense,”
President Vladimir V. Putin
said Thursday during a four-hour question-and-answer session on Russian
television. “There are no Russian units, special services or
instructors in the east of Ukraine.” Pro-Russian activists who have
seized government buildings in at least 10 towns across eastern Ukraine
also deny getting help from professional Russian soldiers or
intelligence agents.

But
masking the identity of its forces, and clouding the possibilities for
international denunciation, is a central part of the Russian strategy,
developed over years of conflict in the former Soviet sphere, Ukrainian
and American officials say.

John
R. Schindler, a former National Security Agency counterintelligence
officer who now teaches at the Naval War College, calls it “special
war”: “an amalgam of espionage, subversion, even forms of terrorism to
attain political ends without actually going to war in any conventional
sense.”

And
one country, Mr. Schindler noted in an article last year in which he
coined the term, that particularly excels at special war is Russia,
which carried out its first post-Soviet war to regain control of
rebellious Chechnya back in 1994 by sending in a column of armored
vehicles filled with Russian soldiers masquerading as pro-Moscow
Chechens.

Russia’s
flair for “maskirovka” — disguised warfare — has become even more
evident under Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer whose closest advisers
are mostly from that same Soviet intelligence agency. For
nearly two months now, the shaky new Ukrainian government has been left
to battle phantoms, first in Crimea and now in eastern Ukraine, where
previously fringe pro-Russian political activists have had their
fortunes lifted by small but heavily armed groups of masked men.

In
the eastern city of Slovyansk, under the control of pro-Russian
insurgents for more than a week now, the green men have worked hard to
blend in with locals but have occasionally let the mask slip, apparently
to send a clear message that any push to regain control by Ukrainian
forces would risk bringing down the wrath of the Russian military.

A
gradation of forces control the city and other areas now in the hands
of separatist rebels, ranging from clearly professional masked soldiers
and unruly groups of local men in camouflage, rifles slung over their
shoulders, to teenage boys in sweatpants carrying baseball bats or
hunting knives. At most times, only the local toughs are visible on the
streets.

But
when a woman sidled up to one of the masked gunmen in the city’s
central square last week and asked where he was from, she got an answer
that summed up Russia’s bedeviling and constantly shifting disguises.
The gunman initially said he was “from Russia,” but when pressed, said
coyly that he was “from New Russia,” a long-forgotten czarist-era term
revived last week by Mr. Putin to describe a large section of eastern
and southern Ukraine.

Asked
by the woman what would happen if the Ukrainian Army attacked, he
replied, “We have to stand for only 24 hours, to tend the fire, and
after that, a one million man army will be here.”

When
a Ukrainian armored column approached the town last Wednesday and then
swiftly surrendered, a group of disciplined green men suddenly appeared
on the scene and stood guard. Over the course of several hours, several
of them told bystanders in the sympathetic crowd that they were
Russians. They allowed themselves to be photographed with local girls,
and drove an armored personnel carrier in circles to please the crowd.

“It’s
hard to fathom that groups of armed men in masks suddenly sprang
forward from the population in eastern Ukraine and systematically began
to occupy government facilities,” Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, NATO’s top
military commander, wrote in a blog post
on the alliance’s website.“It’s hard to fathom because it’s simply not
true. What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that
is well planned and organized, and we assess that it is being carried
out at the direction of Russia.”

His
evidence, however, was mostly circumstantial: Pro-Russian gunmen
“exhibit telltale military training and equipment”; they handle weapons
like professional soldiers, not new recruits to a pickup “self-defense”
force; they carry weapons and equipment that are primarily Russian Army
issue, not gear “that civilians would be likely to be able to get their
hands on in large numbers.” General Breedlove conceded that such points,
taken alone, might not prove much, “but taken in the aggregate, the
story is clear.”

Heightening
skepticism of Russia’s denials is also the fact that Mr. Putin, after
denyingany Russian link to the masked gunmen who seized government
buildings in Crimea and blockaded Ukrainian military bases there, last
week changed his story and said, “Of course, Russian servicemen did back
the Crimean self-defense forces.”

[...]

The
superior, clearly anxious to keep Russia’s role hidden, can be heard
ordering his men on the ground in Ukraine not to identify themselves and
to find someone with a Ukrainian accent who can give an interview to a
Russian television channel. It was very important, he added, to say on
air that all the pro-Russian insurgents want is “federalization,” or
constitutional changes to give eastern Ukraine more autonomy. Military
analysts say the Russian tactics show a disturbing amount of finesse
that speak to long-term planning.

“The
Russians have used very specialized, very effective forces,” said Jacob
W. Kipp, an expert on the Russian military and the former deputy
director of the United States Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies
at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. “They
don’t assume that civilians are cluttering up the battlefield; they
assume they are going to be there,” he said. “They are trained to
operate in these kind of environments.”

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia's takeover of Crimea showed
off its military prowess, as his defense minister reported that
the Russian flag was now flying over all military sites on the Black Sea
peninsula. In a Kremlin ceremony with senior security officials on Friday,
Sergei Shoigu told Putin that all Ukrainian servicemen still loyal
to Kiev have left the Crimea region, whose annexation by Moscow has led
to the worst stand-off with the West since the Cold War.

"The
recent events in Crimea were a serious test," said Putin in an echoing
and glided Kremlin hall, shown on state television. "They demonstrated
both the completely new capabilities of our Armed Forces and the high
morale of the personnel."

A deputy head of the Federal Security Service, Alexander Malevany,
told Putin at the meeting active measures were being taken to counter
what he called growing Western efforts to weaken the Russian state
and curb Moscow's influence in its post-Soviet backyard. The U.S. and NATO have voiced alarm over what they say are thousands
of Russian troops massed near its western border with Ukraine. Putin has
reserved the right to send troops into Ukraine, which is home to a
large population of Russian-speakers in the east.

Putin praised
Russian troops for "avoiding bloodshed" in Crimea,
whose largely ethnic Russian citizens overwhelmingly voted to join
Russia in a March 16 referendum dismissed in the West as illegal.
Speaking to Ukrainian servicemen who chose to swap sides and swear
allegiance to Russia, Putin hinted they would be well rewarded
by pointing out that Russian servicemen earned some four times more than
their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine's former Navy chief, Rear Admiral
Denis Berezovsky, has been
handed the deputy command of Russia's Black Sea Fleet after his
defection.

"The change in state symbols on all ships and in all divisions that
have sided with the Russian army has been completed," Shoigu told Putin.

He
said warships, war planes and other hardware seized from troops
loyal to Kiev will be returned to Ukraine, which could help Russia avoid
a potentially costly legal battle in international arbitration courts.
The Foreign Ministry also said Moscow would move to annul its lease
agreement with Kiev that allowed it to base its Black Sea Fleet on the
peninsula. Despite signs that tensions with the West may be cooling as
a status
quo takes shape in Crimea, Malevany warned Putin at Friday's meeting
that Moscow faces growing threats from the U.S. and its allies, who are
trying to weaken Russia's influence on Ukraine.

"There has been a sharp increase in external threats to the state,"
he said. "The lawful desire of the peoples of Crimea and eastern
Ukrainian regions is causing hysteria in the U.S. and its allies."

To beat Vladimir Putin, we're going to have to be a little more like him

The last two weeks have witnessed the upending of the European order
and the close of the post-Cold War era. With his invasion of Crimea and
the instant absorption of the strategic peninsula, Vladimir Putin has
shown that he will not play by the West’s rules. The “end of history” is
at an end—we’re now seeing the onset of Cold War 2.0.

What’s on the Kremlin’s mind was made clear by Putin’s fire-breathing speech
to the Duma announcing the annexation of Crimea, which blended
retrograde Russian nationalism with a generous helping of messianism on
behalf of his fellow Slavs, alongside the KGB-speak that Putin is so
fond of. If you enjoy mystical references to Orthodox saints of two
millennia past accompanied by warnings about a Western fifth column and
“national traitors,” this was the speech for you.

Putin confirmed
the worst fears of Ukrainians who think they should have their own
country. But his ambitions go well beyond Ukraine: By explicitly linking
Russian ethnicity with membership in the Russian Federation, Putin has
challenged the post-Soviet order writ large.

For years, I studied Russia as a counterintelligence officer for
the National Security Agency, and at times I feel like I’m seeing
history in reverse. The Kremlin is a fiercely revisionist power, seeking
to change the status quo by various forms of force. This will soon
involve NATO members in the Baltics directly, as well as Poland and
Romania indirectly. Longstanding Russian acumen in what I term Special War,
an amalgam of espionage, subversion and terrorism by spies and special
operatives, is already known to Russia’s neighbors and can be expected
to increase.

In truth, Putin set Russia on a course for Cold War
2.0 as far back as 2007, and perhaps earlier; Western
counterintelligence noted major upswings in aggressive Russian espionage
and subversion against NATO members as far back as 2006.The brief
Georgia war of August 2008, which made clear that the Kremlin was
perfectly comfortable with using force in the post-Soviet space, ought
to have served as a bigger wake-up call for the West.

Unfortunately, it didn’t, and now former Soviet republics with a
Russian minority—which is most of them—must now wonder what parts of
their country the Kremlin may wish to unilaterally seize in the future.
Statements from Crimea’s new rulers that the Tatar population will need to be relocated—considering that Stalin deported them in toto in 1944, killing nearly half in the process—speak volumes about the Kremlin’s mentality.

There
is ample Soviet nostalgia on display, combined with a crude nationalism
that ought to worry all Europeans. After all, issues of ethnicity and
borders led directly to both World Wars. Central and Eastern Europe
believed such questions had been settled—by Josef Stalin, let us
remember—in 1945 and ought not be reopened.

Where revisiting this
leads was made painfully clear in the Balkans in the 1990s. Yet Putin
has now done the same in the far bigger post-Soviet space, with
implications that are deeply troubling. That Russia, a patchwork of
nearly 200 nationalities, not all of them deeply pro-Kremlin, ultimately
has far more to lose than Ukraine from redrawing borders based on
ethnicity seems not to have occurred to anyone in the Kremlin.

Since
the annexation of Crimea, Russian intelligence has reportedly been
employing its playbook in eastern and southern Ukraine, using spies and
operatives to stir up trouble among ethnic Russians and lay the
groundwork for a future invasion by “self-defense militias” backed by
Russian troops. It’s not yet clear that these techniques will get Putin
what he wants, but there is always the option of overt invasion by the
Russian military, which must be judged a serious possibility.

If Russia goes down that road, the stoic passivity we have witnessed by besieged Ukrainian troops in Crimea will end and Moscow will have a major war on its hands—indeed
the biggest European conflict since 1945. Moves by the Russian military
into central Ukraine would generate stiff resistance that could last
years, particularly since the brutal Stalinist methods of mass
repression that were needed to pacify Ukraine in the late 1940s are off
the table for even Putin in 2014. In the unlikely event that Russian
forces move into western Ukraine, past Kyiv and toward Poland, it would
be difficult to see how NATO could avoid becoming involved.

That
said, it’s evident that Moscow prefers easy conquest and would likely
avoid any moves that could trigger a genuine war with NATO. Putin has
become a gambler but not yet a fool. However, his nationalist attack on
the post-Cold War European order is bound to evoke memories of Adolf
Hitler in the late 1930s. Like Hitler, Putin has reestablished the pride
of a defeated people, brought them out of economic disaster, rebuilt
the military and revitalized ethno-nationalism while humiliating the
hated victors of the last war. This is a heady brew, so Putin’s current
high popularity numbers among average Russians ought not surprise, but
the Kremlin’s vision of a Russian Lebensraum transcending current borders ought to alarm to anyone invested in European peace and stability.

Whether
or not Putin invades mainland Ukraine, NATO must understand that the
Kremlin has decided to begin a new Cold War by attacking the settlement
of the last one. Further Western denial—like we saw after the invasion
of Georgia—will only encourage more Russian adventurism, with all the
attendant risks of wider conflict and major war. While the George W.
Bush administration bears its share of the blame here, there is no
denying that the Obama White House has repeatedly fumbled the ball with
Russia. The famed “reset” was a fine idea if Dmitry Medvedev were
actually running Russia, which he certainly was not. Moreover, this
White House’s mishandling of Syria, essentially outsourcing U.S. policy
to Moscow, only encouraged more hardball from Putin, as was predictable to those who understand this Kremlin.

All
the same, I have never had much sympathy for neoconservative critiques
of Putin’s Russia, which too often have counseled needless hostility and
willful disregard for legitimate Russian interests in Moscow’s “near
abroad,” as well as unwise emphasis on missile defense, seen by the
Kremlin as a threat. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western
powers, including the United States, were indeed too casually dismissive
of Russian concerns—the Balkan wars of the 1990s being a major case in
point—and Moscow has now gotten its revenge, repaid with interest, in
Ukraine.John R. Schindler is professor of national security
affairs at the Naval War College and a former National Security Agency
counterintelligence officer.Source: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/new-cold-war-russia

Ukraine Is Not Ready for the Consequences of Taking Russia’s Military Bait

By sending its military to quell the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, the government in Kiev may be setting itself up for a spectacular defeat, as neither its army nor its intelligence services are prepared for a confrontation with Russia Like many of the leading men in Ukraine’s new military pecking
order, Petr Mekhed wasn’t exactly ripe for the task of fending off a
Russian invasion when he assumed the post of Deputy Defense Minister in
February. His last tour of combat duty was about 30 years ago, during
the Soviet war in Afghanistan, after which he reached the rank of
colonel in the Red Army. When revolution in Ukraine broke out this
winter, his wartime experience made him better equipped than most at
defending the barricades of the Maidan protest camp in the center of
Kiev. But it was not as useful in preparing him to lead his country into
war. “For some issues I’ve had to sit down with a book and study up,”
he says.

His conclusion so far is an unsettling one for Ukraine’s political
leaders. If they want to find a way out of their conflict with Russia,
which edged closer on Tuesday to military confrontation in the eastern
region of Donetsk, they have only one way to do it, Mekhed says, and
that is to negotiate. “We’ll never get anywhere through the use of
military force,” he tells TIME. It would be much more effective to
undercut Russia’s support for the local separatists by meeting them
halfway, Mekhed suggests, with an offer of more autonomy for Ukraine’s
eastern regions. “Our chances of saving Donetsk are now in the hands of
our politicians and their ability to sit down with the people there and
talk to them.”

But those politicians don’t seem to agree. On Tuesday morning,
Ukraine’s interim President, Oleksandr Turchynov, launched the first
military action against the pro-Russian gunmen who seized parts of
Donetsk over the weekend. The assault, which the central government in
Kiev termed an antiterrorist operation, reportedly
involved more than a dozen armored personnel carriers, as well as
helicopters and military trucks that faced off against 30 gunmen for
control of an airport near the town of Kramatorsk.

So was Ukraine ready for that kind of standoff? Maybe. But some of
its top military and intelligence officials highly doubt that it is
ready for the likely fallout, and whatever support Tuesday’s operation garnered from the White House will
probably not translate into much military assistance from the West.
More likely, it will provoke a Russian counterstrike, not from the small
group of Russian special forces who have apparently been leading the
separatists in Donetsk, but from the full weight of the Russian
military. That would mean game over pretty quickly for Ukraine.

So far, its leaders seem to be enjoying their taste of victory. When
reports came back to Kiev that Tuesday’s operation was a success — that
the Ukrainian forces had managed to repel the separatist attack on the
airport — Turchynov made a self-congratulatory statement to parliament.
“I’m convinced that there will not be any terrorists left soon in
Donetsk and other regions and they will find themselves in the dock —
this is where they belong,” he said.

That did not go over well with Vladimir Putin. In a phone call
on Tuesday night with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Russian
President said the crisis in eastern Ukraine had “sharpened drastically”
and stressed that the world “must clearly condemn these
anticonstitutional actions.” The world, of course, did no such thing,
nor has it done much to help Ukraine prepare for what’s likely coming.

In early March, when Russia had just begun its military occupation of
Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, Mekhed, a small, soft-spoken man with
silver hair and a slight stutter, made his first official visit to
Brussels to hold talks with the NATO alliance. He had no illusions about
any of the Western powers coming to Ukraine’s defense, but he held out
hope for some help with communications and intelligence. “We have
problems with figuring out what forces are where,” he said, referring to
the Russians. “On top of that, our weapons systems are by and large
tied up with Russia, with cooperation with Russia.”

That makes upgrading those systems extremely difficult for Ukraine.
In recent years, its military infrastructure has been “systematically
destroyed” through the neglect, corruption and malfeasance of Ukraine’s
former leaders, says Mekhed, but bringing them back to working order
would require buying up spare parts from Russia, which Moscow has
unsurprisingly refused to sell.

On Tuesday afternoon, a few hours before the clashes near the
airport, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it was suspending
all military supplies to Ukraine. “May I remind you that Russia has
committed not to provide, or to show restraint in providing, weapons to
conflict zones,” Russia’s Deputy Minister of Defense Anatoly Antonov
said in a statement
explaining the decision. (His caveat about “restraint” was apparently
meant to make room for Russia’s ongoing sale of weapons to Syria during
its civil war.)

In those conditions, Ukraine would be unable to repair much of its
military hardware even if it had help from NATO; none of the members of
that alliance use or produce the kind of kit that Ukraine needs. “The
spare parts all come from Russia,” says Mekhed. “So we have to find new
markets to find similar equipment to arm our troops, and not only
weapons, but also training of the servicemen before we can put those
weapons on the battlefield.”

That would take months or years, not to mention billions of extra
dollars that Ukraine’s nearly bankrupt economy cannot spare. It is
already having enough trouble with the relatively faster and cheaper
task of bringing its intelligence services up to scratch. Much like the
weakness of its military, Ukraine’s failures in the field espionage have
a lot to do with its fraternal ties to Russia. “We even have an
agreement on the books that forbids our [military intelligence] agencies
from working against each other,” says Igor Smeshko, who served as head
of Ukraine’s State Security Service from 2003 to 2005. “We could never
have imagined that our Russian brothers would ever fight a war against
us,” he says. “We could never have thought that just when we’d been
bloodied from fighting our own tyranny here at home, that we would get a
knife in the back from the Russians.”

In retrospect, that abundance of trust looks painfully naive, but it
goes far in explaining why Ukraine let its intelligence work lapse in
recent years, particularly near the border with Russia. That mistake has
left it particularly ill equipped to deal with the current phase of the
conflict with Russia. Over the past few days, the troops who have been
seizing police stations and other government buildings have borne all
the hallmarks of Russian special forces who have removed the insignia
from their uniforms — the same tactic Russia used during its conquest of
Crimea.

The most effective way for Ukraine to counter that kind of
semiclandestine invasion, says Smeshko, would be to deploy small, mobile
teams of special-operations troops, the kind that Ukraine’s
intelligence services should have at their disposal, to isolate and
arrest the Russian saboteurs. “Only special forces can go up against
special forces,” he says.

Instead, the government in Kiev seems to be employing a mix of
Interior Ministry police and military troops, and on Tuesday morning, it
also sent its first batch of national-guard volunteers, with little or
no apparent training, to help fight separatism in eastern Ukraine. “The
troops have a high fighting spirit,” said Andriy Parubiy, the head of
Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, in dispatching them to
the east. “It’s not easy over there,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
“But I’m sure we will win, because with us is God and Ukraine.” (Before
assuming one of his country’s most senior military posts in February,
Parubiy had zero military experience of any kind other than his work
protecting the protest camp in Kiev this winter. His Russian
counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, is a hardened 17-year veteran of the KGB
who oversaw Russia’s scorched-earth conquest of Chechnya in 1999–2000.)

The mismatched forces now facing off in eastern Ukraine also present a
potential risk to the locals. In the past few days, the pro-Russian
separatist troops have proved adept at blending in among mobs of
civilians, who have done the heavy lifting in the occupation of numerous
government buildings across Donetsk. The military forces Ukraine has
now sent to evict them are not trained to pick out the organizers of
those attacks from among the throngs they use. “And that is the one
thing our strategic opponent is waiting for, a picture of mass
bloodshed,” says Smeshko.

Considering how little room for error Ukraine has in this operation,
Mekhed should perhaps feel lucky to be focusing on a different part of
the battlefield. Russia’s annexation of Crimea left thousands of
Ukrainian servicemen marooned on that suddenly foreign peninsula, and
Mekhed has been in charge of securing their return to mainland Ukraine.
At the briefing he gave to reporters on Tuesday in Kiev, he focused
mostly on all that this effort entails, such as the purchase of sleeping
bags, sleeping mats and camouflage netting for all the displaced
troops.

“We have to evacuate all of our servicemen and equipment from Crimea,
to save what we could salvage from there, to set up new garrisons, and
all of that is a whole lot of work,” he told TIME after the briefing at a
Kiev hotel. “So believe me, Russia’s actions have already set us back
years.” And that may just be the beginning.

A senior military academic is warning Europe is staring down the
barrel of its biggest war since 1945. And it could start in days, as
Russian forces mass on the border with Ukraine — apparently poised to
invade. The commander of NATO forces in Europe visited the White
House overnight to voice his alarm at Moscow’s massive military build-up
facing eastern Ukraine — on the other side of the embattled country to
the already-annexed Crimean peninsula. Many other military and political voices are suddenly expressing the same fears. “By
the end of the weekend, Europe’s biggest war since 1945 will have begun
or Putin will have started to send the troops on the border home,”
declared Professor of the Naval War College at Boston University, John
Schindler. And he is not the only academic voicing this concern. The
troops are reportedly not average Russian conscripts. New intelligence
reveals the mechanised infantry units and their tanks to be among the
best and most highly trained the Russian Federation has — diverted from
their Moscow barracks to their tents and revetments overlooking Ukraine. Also
early this morning Australia time, a group of masked right wing
ultra-nationalists began a demonstration inside and out of the Ukraine’s
main parliament building - calling for the sacking of the police
minister after one of their leaders was shot dead.

There
are even reports — unconfirmed at this stage — that
Russia has in the past few hours erected a massive field hospital
designed to treat wounded soldiers. And Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s rhetoric has also been heating up, with claims that
Russian-speaking people in Ukraine are being treated “brutally”. The
much-talked-about Russian defence exercises near the Ukraine seem to be a
spoof, designed to explain away the buildup. While
highly publicised exercises have been underway in distant Siberia, only
a few “events” seem to have been staged among the troops massed near
Crimea and Ukraine. US Defense officials say the numbers of troops far
exceeds the
amount needed for any training exercise. And there is no evidence any
large-scale manoeuvres have actually taken place. More worrying is that
none of the troops have returned to their bases. War expert Schindler
has been fast and furiously tweeting his fears to all who care to listen
in recent hours.

He speculates the real number of Russian troops now in place may amount to 80,000. “(The)
odds of invasion are raising,” he tweeted early this morning. “Only
Putin really knows, but the world will know soon enough.”

He
argues that the presence of Russia’s best and finest forces
are unnecessary for a “show of strength”. Many of the units are
particularly loyal to Putin, he points out, meaning the Russian
president won’t want them far from his side in Moscow for long. It’s a
tactical move not lost on the military head of NATO — Europe’s defence
organisation. General
Philip Breedlove, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, gave a
classified briefing last night to various US government committees.
“We’re all concerned about what Russia is doing on the border
of Ukraine,” Breedlove said after the first briefing. “The size of the
forces have a message that are not congruous with respecting the
borders.” Even the United States — until now somewhat timid in its talk of Russia’s ambitions — is starting to get the message.

“The
thinking in the US government is that the likelihood of a
major Russian incursion into Ukraine has increased,” a senior US
official told Fox News. “I can’t tell you how awful this is,” said one
congressional source who spoke to Fox News on the condition of
anonymity. CNN
reports two Obama administration officials admitting off-record that
new threat assessments are saying an invasion was far more likely than
previously thought. Nothing is certain, the officials said. But there
have been “worrying signs” in the past three or four days. “This
has shifted our thinking that the likelihood of a further Russian
incursion is more probable than it was previously thought to be,” one
said. In recent weeks the West has been stating its belief that
there was only 30,000 Russian troops deployed to the Ukraine region. But
there is mounting evidence a further 50,000 have arrived in the past
few days.

Pentagon
Press Secretary, Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby told a
press conference early this morning that Russia continues to reinforce
its units along the eastern and southern Ukraine border. “It’s doing
nothing to assist in the stability of that part of Europe,” the admiral
said. “I
would tell you that the staff here in the Pentagon, both the civilian
and uniformed, are constantly looking at other ways that ... we can
further reassure our allies and partners in Europe to potentially look
at either adding to or reinforcing existing operations or exercises or
even adding on additional opportunities,” Kirby said. “We’re looking at
that very closely right now ...” “Our concern is for the
territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and for the Ukrainian
people and their nation,” Kirby said.

Overnight the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly
voted in favour of Ukraine. With 100 votes for, and only 11 against, the
General Assembly voted to condemn Russia’s annexation of Crimea as
illegal. Another 58 nations abstained. The troop build-up along
the border is reminiscent of Russia’s military movements prior to the
conflicts in Chechnya and Georgia, one US official said. A Defense
official said if Russia were to invade the mainland, Ukraine would
attempt to defend itself and this would be “far from a bloodless event
as we saw in Crimea.” However, Ukraine would be outmatched, this
official told Fox News.

I’ve been asked this question a lot, and had the chance to expound on it at a recent event in Parliament
sponsored by the Henry Jackson Society, so thought I’d briefly outline
my thoughts here. That said, though, I should stress that the more time
passes, the less likely I think such an attack becomes, because of the
shifting political situation and also–as Kyiv moves forces east and
mobilises reserves and volunteers–the military calculus. However, it
cannot be excluded, so it is worth still considering, not least as the
preparatory phases I outline below have all been carried out; the
Russian General Staff may well not yet know if it is going to be
invading, but it has made sure that if the word does come down from the
Kremlin, it will be ready.

In brief, the aim would be a blitzkrieg that, before Ukraine has the
chance properly to muster its forces and, perhaps more to the point, the
West can meaningfully react, allows the Russians to draw a new front
line and assert their own ground truth, much as happened in Crimea
(though this would be much more bloody and contested). This would not be
a bid to conquer the whole country (the real question is whether they’d
seek to push as far as Odessa, taking more risks and extending their
supply lines, but also essentially depriving Ukraine of a coastline) but
instead quickly to take those areas where there are potentially
supportive local political elites and Russophone populations, and
consequently pretexts (however flimsy) to portray invasion as
‘liberation.’

The first stage would be to infiltrate special forces and agents into
both east and western Ukraine, as well as build up networks of allies
and agents locally, including elements of the Ukrainian SBU (Security
Service) whose real links are to Moscow. Meanwhile, they will develop
their abilities to monitor and, in due course, jam Ukrainian
communications. I note than a Beriev A-50 ‘Mainstay’ airborne
early-warning and eavesdropping aircraft has been deployed to
neighbouring Belarus, from whose airspace it can monitor Ukraine from
safe, friendly skies.

Vremya Cha, ‘Zero Hour,’ would be marked with a massive
attempt to shatter Ukraine’s command, control and communications
infrastructure through everything from jamming and cyberattack to
physical sabotage. Meanwhile, missile, bomber and artillery attacks
would not only target concentrations of forces but also crater runways,
smash bridges, rip train tracks and chew through roads in the hopes of
delaying Ukrainian attempts to muster their forces in the critical first
days and hours. The idea would be to spread chaos, so there might even
be some feints, or the appearance of feints, from Belarus or Russian
forces in Transnistria: the Russians do understand maskirovka, strategic deception, very well, and will do whatever they can to keep Kyiv uncertain and off-balance.

Meanwhile, the airports in eastern cities such as Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk will be being seized, whether by Russian GRU Spetsnaz commandoes or local allies, such as Berkut
special police under the command of friendly local administrations.
That will allow the rapid insertion of the paratroop forces the Russians
have already assembled close by, who can be flown in under heavy
fighter and EW cover (that Russia will essentially dominate Ukraine’s
skies is scarcely in doubt). They will then seize the main cities.

Paratroopers are tough and move fast, but they can be brittle in
stand-up conflict with mechanised forces, so regular Russian ground
forces will spill across the border to support them. Not only have
armoured and mechanised forces been mustered along the border, with full
artillery support, but perhaps more telling has been the assembly of
the logistical necessities–fuel, ammunition, medical supplies, etc–for
high-tempo operations.

The aim, as mentioned, will be to move fast to seize and define a new
front line wherever Moscow wants it. They may well simply bypass
Ukrainian troop concentrations when they can, leaving them to be mopped
up later. The greatest risk, after all, is that they get bogged down
long enough for Kyiv to concentrate its forces or, potentially, the West
to act. There would also be deployments of Interior Troops for
rear-area security given that even in the east while the cities may be
predominantly Russophone, the countryside is heavily Ukrainian.

The
preparations are in place, it would be easy for Moscow to manufacture a
pretext for action, and presenting the outside world with a fait
accompli and essentially trying to call its bluff is classic Putin.
However, the time for such an operation was probably a week ago rather
than now, while the risks in such an adventure would be considerable.
Russia has perhaps twice as many forces in theatre and a clear
superiority in airpower, but not such a great advantage that it can be
assured a quick and easy victory. It would also face the risk of
guerrilla actions and public resistance behind its lines, as well as
economic sanctions at the very least, but the possibility also of more
direct action by the West. In this context, a further Russian move makes
little real sense. But then again, nor did the annexation of Crimea, so
we have to accept that Putin now is working on a very different set of assumptions than the rest of us.

Moscow faces growing threats from the United States and its allies, who are trying to weaken Russia's influence on Ukraine, a senior security official was quoted as telling President Vladimir Putin on Friday. "There has been a sharp
increase in external threats to the state. The lawful desire of the
peoples of Crimea and eastern Ukrainian regions is causing hysteria in
the United States and its allies," Interfax quoted Alexander Malevany,
deputy head of the Federal Security Service, as saying. He said Russia
was taking "offensive counter-intelligence and intelligence measures"
to blunt Western efforts to "weaken Russian influence in a region that
is of vital importance", Interfax reported.

The
report indicated Malevany had given no details about the measures, but
the remarks could increase Western concerns that Moscow may have designs
on eastern Ukraine
after annexing the Crimea region, a move that has caused the biggest
crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War. U.S. President Barack Obama
said on Friday that a build-up of Russian troops near Ukraine's eastern
border may be more than just an effort to intimidate Ukraine, and urged
Moscow to pull its forces back to ease tension. Russia
took military control over largely ethnic-Russian Crimea before its
citizens voted to join Russia in a March 16 referendum dismissed in the
West as illegal.

Putin has received
permission from parliament to send the armed forces into Ukraine if
necessary, raising concerns that he could cite alleged threats to
Russian-speakers in eastern regions as grounds for intervention.

In a telephone call Monday between Russia's Defense Minister General
Sergei Shoigu and the U.S. Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel, Shoigu
described the activity of U.S. and NATO troops near Russia's border as
"unprecedented."

According to the official
Russian version of the call, his American counterpart assured him the
alliance did not have "provocative or expansionist" intentions -- and
that Russia should know this.

But it hardly seems to
matter how often NATO makes these assurances. The Kremlin will never
trust them. Fear of the Western military alliance's steady march east is
deep-rooted. It strikes at the very heart of Russia's national sense of
security, a relic of Cold War enmity which has seeped down to
post-Soviet generations.

Ilya Saraev is a
15-year-old pupil at the First Moscow cadet school in Moscow. He thinks
long and hard when I ask him about NATO. "I think NATO might be a friend
to Russia but there's one point I don't understand: Why it needs to
approach the border with Russia more and more," he says.

Cadet school is an
education in patriotism, like something from a bygone era. Besides the
regular classes, there are lessons in ballroom dancing. Teenage cadets
proudly leading local beauties through the waltz while outside their
classmates rehearse the goosestep.

After the takeover of Crimea, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russia of behaving in a 19th century fashion
in the 21st century. In some ways it's an epithet that seems to ring
true here. The children are immaculately mannered and thoughtful. They
write to their fellow cadets in Crimea. They say they feel sad there's
this tension between brother nations -- Russia and Ukraine.

"People still don't
realize that war means despair and grief," says 16-year-old Vlad
Voinakov. "They can't find a compromise because people's interests
become involved and that's where the problem lies."

Russia and NATO have
never been able to find much of a compromise. Russia's repeated stance
is that after German reunification, promises were made that NATO would
never expand eastward -- and were promptly broken. NATO says this is
simply not true. "No such pledge was made, and no evidence to back up
Russia's claims has ever been produced," the alliance wrote in an April
fact sheet entitled "Russia's accusations -- setting the record
straight."

NATO says it has tried
hard to make Russia a "privileged partner." It has worked together with
Russia on a range of issues from counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics
to submarine rescue and emergency planning. NATO says that
fundamentally Russia's anti-NATO rhetoric is an attempt to "divert
attention away from its actions" in Ukraine. Now all cooperation is off
the table.

"From the Russian side,
that NATO-Russian cooperation was just a camouflage," says Vladimir
Batyuk of Russian think tank, the Institute of USA and Canada Studies.
"After the Cold War Russia tried several times to become a member and
the Americans always said, 'it's not going to happen.'"

He quotes Lord
Ismay, NATO's first Secretary General, on the object of NATO's
existence: "To keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans
down."

Russian President
Vladimir Putin declared at his annual direct call with the Russian
people that part of his reasoning for annexing Crimea was to protect
Sevastopol, home of Russia's Black Sea fleet, from ever falling into
NATO's hands. "If we don't do anything, Ukraine will be drawn into NATO
sometime in the future. We'll be told: "This doesn't concern you," and
NATO ships will dock in Sevastopol, the city of Russia's naval glory,"
he said.

Ukraine's Prime Minister
Arseniy Yetsenyuk has said Ukrainian accession to NATO is not a
priority. The nation is currently in such a state of disarray that NATO
membership seems unimaginable. But a membership action plan was
discussed for both Ukraine and Georgia at the Bucharest Summit in 2008.
It was put on hold. But Putin does not forget.

"Ever since (former
Ukraine President Viktor) Yanukovych fled his country and a pro-Western
government took power in his country, of course this is something
[Putin] couldn't stop thinking about," says Masha Lipman of the Carnegie
Moscow Center. "So for him, to prevent Ukraine from becoming part of
the western orbit if not of NATO, was something he absolutely cannot
afford."

This is why the rotation
of 600 U.S. troops, small as it is, through the Baltic states and
Poland for joint-training exercises is such an affront for Russia. This
is why it is perhaps not strictly fair to accuse Russia of just engaging
in propaganda when it declares its mistrust of NATO.

Batyuk says he feels
that the general public's attitude to the alliance has worsened since
the end of the Cold War. Then, people were able to dismiss the Kremlin's
line towards NATO as Soviet propaganda, he says. Now it's different. "A
store of unsuccessful mishaps in relations between Russia and the West
after the end of the Cold War has contributed to a rise in suspicions on
the Russian side to Western policy in general and NATO in particular."

That's one of the
reasons Putin's popularity has soared since the annexation of Crimea.
There is a feeling among the general public that, at last, Russia is
standing up for its rights in the post-Soviet space where it has sat
maligned for decades. Much as the Kremlin likes to nurture that
narrative, it is also easy to see why it resonates with the Russian
public.

Russia claimed Tuesday that 150
specialists from an American private military group are in eastern
Ukraine, the region where pro-Russia protesters are clashing with
government forces. A woman who
identified herself as an employee of the group, the security contracting
company Greystone, declined comment. She also declined to provide her
name. Greystone, on its website,
identifies itself as a “provider of aviation and protective support
services and training” formerly part of Xe Services, the security
contracting company once known as Blackwater.

A
statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the Americans
were wearing the uniforms of Sokol, a Ukrainian police force, and were
“of particular concern.” A State
Department official referred questions to the company and said: “As for
the United States, we do not have any U.S. military units in Ukraine.”

Russia
also said that militants from Right Sector, a hard-line Ukrainian
nationalist organization, were trying to use force to stop protesters
opposed to the new Ukrainian government in Kiev. Pro-Russian activists have holed up in Ukrainian government buildings this week
in the country’s east and have called for a referendum on breaking from
Ukraine, similar to a vote last month in which the Crimean peninsula
voters to leave Ukraine and join Russia.

Russia has said it has
no designs on invading eastern Ukraine. The White House on Monday warned
Russia against moving “overtly or covertly” into that region and said
there was evidence that the pro-Russian demonstrators are being paid. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that Russian agents are to blame
for unrest this week in Ukraine, and he warned that Russia may be
laying the groundwork for a military intervention, just as it did before
seizing the Crimean peninsula.

The deployment of foreign private security firms in Ukraine is
unacceptable as they increase the risk of an outbreak of civil war,
Dennis John Kucinich, a former US Representative from Ohio and a
two-time presidential candidate, told RIA Novosti on Wednesday.

“We saw in Iraq how private security forces can get out of control.
Whenever you are in a politically sensitive, a military sensitive
situation the last thing you want is private security out there, because
they can actually profit by an expanded conflict. They can stir up a
war and then profit from it,” Kucinich said.

The former US Representative said he is completely against the use of private security companies in any conflicts.

“If oligarchs want to hire people to protect them, they have a right
to do that. But if nations bring in private armies you are looking at
combustible material here because there is no control. The private
armies will pursue private interests. They don't care about anything
except making more money. And the more war there is, the more money they
make,” Kucinich underlined. The big question is who exactly is financing the deployment of such private armies in Ukraine, the politician noted.

“You know the only money that Ukraine is getting right now is from the IMF. Who is paying these private armies?”

The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier voiced concerns over the buildup
of Ukrainian forces in the southeastern part of the country involving
some 150 American mercenaries from the Greystone company. Greystone is a private security company registered in Barbados,
according to open sources. It boasts it provides "protective security
and training solutions to customers in challenging environments.”

In February, the Ukrainian parliament, backed by far-right groups,
ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, amended the constitution and
scheduled an early presidential election for May 25. Moscow has described the uprising in Kiev as an illegitimate fascist
coup and a military seizure of power, which resulted in it taking steps
to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine, including the reunification of
Crimea with Russia.

Russia is planning to expand its permanent military presence outside
its borders by placing military bases in a number of foreign countries,
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday. Shoigu said the list includes Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Seychelles, Singapore and several other countries.

“The talks are under way, and we are close to signing the relevant documents,” Shoigu told reporters in Moscow.

The minister added that the negotiations cover not only military
bases but also visits to ports in such countries on favorable conditions
as well as the opening of refueling sites for Russian strategic bombers
on patrol.Moscow currently has only one naval base outside the former Soviet
Union – in Tartus, Syria, but the fate of this naval facility is
uncertain because of the ongoing civil war in that country.

Post-Soviet Russia closed a large naval base in Vietnam and a radar base in Cuba in 2002 due to financial constraints.However, Russia has started reviving its navy and strategic aviation
since mid-2000s, seeing them as a tool to project the Russian image
abroad and to protect its national interests around the globe.

Now, Moscow needs to place such military assets in strategically
important regions of the world to make them work effectively toward the
goal of expanding Russia’s global influence.

A
Russian warship was docked in Havana Wednesday, without explanation
from Communist Cuba or its state media. The Viktor Leonov CCB-175 boat,
measuring 91.5 meters (300 feet) long and 14.5 meters wide, was docked
at the port of Havana's cruise ship area, near the Russian Orthodox
Cathedral. The
Vishnya, or Meridian-class intelligence ship, which has a crew of
around 200, went into service in the Black Sea in 1988 before it was
transferred seven years later to the northern fleet, Russian media
sources said. Neither Cuban authorities nor state media have mentioned
the ship's visit, unlike on previous tours by Russian warships.The former Soviet Union was Cuba's
sponsor state through three decades of Cold War. After a period of some
distancing under former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, the countries
renewed their political, economic and military cooperation. The ship is reportedly armed with 30mm guns and anti-aircraft missiles. Its visit comes as isolated
Havana's current economic and political patron, Venezuela, is facing
unprecedented violent protests against President Nicolas Maduro's
government.

Russian child soldiers trained in battle tactics, weapons and hand-to-hand combat to 'repel any enemy of the Motherland'

Military sports club 'Berkut', or 'Golden Eagle', is in Zhukovsky, Russia

Children as young a five sent on marches, trained in hand-to-hand combat

They are even trained to fire Kalashnikovs, small arms and throw grenades

The course offers preparation 'to young fighters, to repel any enemy'

Parents urged to send kids before they become 'gamblers or drug addicts'

Some parents would gasp at the thought
of their children playing with a toy gun, but these Russian children
are actually encouraged to take up real arms. Military
sports club, 'Berkut', (meaning golden eagle), trains up young Russian,
who dream of joining the elite units of the Russian army and fighting
under the command of President Vladimir Putin. A
young boy is pictured on their website brandishing a hand gun and
dressed in military fatigues with his finger over the trigger.

Old enough to hold a gun: Military sports club,
'Berkut', (meaning golden eagle), trains up young Russian, who dream of
joining the elite units of the Russian army and fighting under the
command of President Vladimir Putin

Gun trained: A young boy is pictured on their
website brandishing a hand gun and dressed in military fatigues with his
finger over the trigger

Special forces trained: Children as young a five
are sent on forced marches, given battlefield training, taught
hand-to-hand combat, and how to use military equipment

Early learners: 12-year-olds are also taught how to fire Kalashnikov assault rifles and other small arms

Nerves: During the clubs regular camps, some
children are given the opportunity to parachute jump during their
paratrooper training

Children as young a five are sent on
forced marches, given battlefield training, taught hand to hand combat,
and how to use military equipment. 12 year olds are also taught how to
fire Kalashnikov assault rifles and other small arms. During the clubs regular camps, some children are given the opportunity to parachute jump during their paratrooper training.

Young gun: This grab from the camp's website shows just how young the recruits are encouraged to start learning

Impressionable age: The club appears to urge
Russian parents not to wait until their child becomes a compulsive
gambler, drug addict or alcoholic, before sending them to the club

Defenders: The club based in Zhukovsky, Russia,
claims to provide military training designed to develop the younger
generation of the 'motherland' - a term synonymous with the former
Soviet Union and the communist rule of the last century

Throw over: They are also taught the art of hand-to-hand combat

Loyal family: The training is designed to promote a healthy lifestyle, good physical development and loyalty to their homeland

Learning to use a targeting device: Most
instructors are ex-armed forces and have first-hand knowledge of the
hardships of service in the armed forces and offer preparation 'to young
fighters, to repel any enemy'

Range of activities: Other activities include skydive training, survival skills and winter hiking

Fitness test: Every year camouflage clad
children and adults from the club march into the mountains of the Crimea
for an annual 130km trek

The club based in
Zhukovsky, Russia, claims to provide military training designed to
develop the younger generation of the 'motherland' - a term synonymous
with the former Soviet Union and the communist rule of the last century. The training is designed to promote a healthy lifestyle, good physical development and loyalty to their homeland. Most
instructors are ex-armed forces and have first-hand knowledge of the
hardships of service in the armed forces and offer preparation 'to young
fighters, to repel any enemy'.

Well armed: It also offers their youngsters the
opportunity to become full-fledged citizens of society and learn to
'resist evil and violence, to protect the weak and the oppressed, to
believe in justice and always be guided by courage and bravery'

Strong display: Every year the club celebrates
the victory of the Soviet Union during WW2 with a public performance, in
which camouflage-clad children demonstrate their hand to combat combat
skills in front of proud parents

Head over heels: Children demonstrate acrobatic technique at the Golden Eagle club, Zhukovsky, Russia

Tough kid: Formed during the Soviet era, the club
offers one program provided in The Young Paratrooper course

Grenade throwing: A young boy hones his grenade-throwing skills during battlefield practice in the woods

No messing: The course, which includes several
military-technical disciplines, physical conditioning and the
development a boy's moral qualities, can create quite an appetite

Other activities include
skydive training, survival skills and winter hiking. Every year
camouflage clad children and adults from the club march into the
mountains of the Crimea for an annual 130km trek. The
club appears to urge Russian parents not to wait until their child
becomes a compulsive gambler, drug addict or alcoholic, before sending
them to the club. It also
offers their youngsters the opportunity to become full-fledged citizens
of society and learn to 'resist evil and violence, to protect the weak
and the oppressed, to believe in justice and always be guided by courage
and bravery'. Every year
the club celebrates the victory of the Soviet Union during WW2 with a
public performance, in which camouflage-clad children demonstrate their
hand to combat combat skills in front of proud parents. Formed
during the Soviet era, the club offers one program provided in The
Young Paratrooper course which includes several military-technical
disciplines, physical conditioning and the development a boy's moral
qualities.

Russia on Monday put into service its second Borei-class nuclear submarine, nearly one year after the first one came into use in January.Speaking at the launching ceremony of the submarine named Alexander Nevsky, President Vladimir Putin said the vessel is a completely new strategic missile carrier. "Equipment of that class should become a cornerstone of the sea-based part of our nuclear triad," said Putin via video link. The submarine, whose construction started in 2004, was put afloat in the White Sea port of Severomorsk, home of the Russian Northern Fleet.A third sibling submarine is expected to be put into service in 2014. According to Putin, the Russian Navy will be equipped with eight Borei-class and eight multi-target Yasen-class nuclear submarines by 2020. He added Russia will build more non-nuclear multi-target submarines and develop coastal naval infrastructure.

Russia carried out a successful test-firing of an RS-24 Yars
ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwest Russia on
Tuesday, a military representative said. “Today, December 24 at 11:00 a.m. Moscow time a detachment of the
Strategic Missile Forces conducted a test launch of a Yars silo-based
solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with a test
warhead,” Colonel Igor Yegorov said. The fifth-generation RS-24 (NATO reporting name SS-29) is an upgraded version of the Topol-M
ballistic missile and can carry multiple independently-targetable
nuclear warheads designed to evade missile defense systems. The first
RS-24 launch took place at Plesetsk in 2007. In October the Russian newspaper Vedemosti reported that another new
ballistic missile, codenamed RS-26 Rubezh, would have its first test
launch by the end of the year.

Russia’s
Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) will be fully equipped with
fifth-generation missile systems by 2021, a Defense Ministry spokesman
said Wednesday. The proportion of modern missiles in the RVSN will reach
around 60
percent by 2016 and 98 percent by 2021, Col. Igor Yegorov said. In
addition to the fifth-generation Yars and Topol-M missiles, new
command and control centers are being built and new communications,
security and other systems put in place, he said. Russia's missile
forces are being modernized in a bid to enable them
to penetrate the anti-missile defense systems being fielded by NATO and
the United States, Russian officials have said previously.

The
development of Russia's formidable S-500 air defense system will
be completed in 2015, and the system could be put in service with the
Russian military as early as in 2017, the manufacturer, Almaz-Antey,
said Wednesday. “We must finish the S-500 development in 2015. There
have been no
changes in schedule,” Almaz-Antey general director Vitaly Neskorodov
told RIA Novosti, commenting on reports that the development could be
delayed. “The testing will take two or three years, so the first
deliveries could take place in 2017-2018,” Neskorodov said. The S-500, a
long-range air defense missile system, is expected to
become the backbone of a unified aerospace defense system being formed
in Russia. The system will have an extended range of up to 600
kilometers (370 miles) and simultaneously engage up to 10 targets. The
Russian military has demanded that the system must be capable of
intercepting ballistic missiles and hypersonic cruise missiles, and
plans to order at least 10 battalions of S-500s for the future Russian
Aerospace Defense Forces. The S-500 could become a trump card in
Russia’s response to the
US-backed European missile shield, which Moscow believes may threaten
Russia’s nuclear deterrent.

A batch of Su-34 fighter jets was delivered to Russia’s military
Monday in the final consignment under a 2008 deal with the Defense
Ministry for Sukhoi aircraft maker to deliver 32 of the two-seat
bombers. The aircraft, also known by the NATO codename Fullback, were
handed
over at the Novosibirsk aircraft plant, which is part of the Sukhoi
holding company. Sukhoi officials said the company has already started
implementing
another contract with the Defense Ministry to deliver an additional 92
Su-34s, making a total of 124 aircraft by 2020. A derivative of the
Su-27 fighter, the Su-34 is fitted with twin
AL-31MF afterburner turbojet engines and can carry a payload of up to
eight tons of precision-guided weapons over 4,000 kilometers. The
aircraft will eventually replace all of the ageing Su-24 strike aircraft
in service with the Russian air force and navy.

Modernized
MiG-31BM interceptor aircraft have started combat alert
duty at an airbase in Tver Region in western Russia, with the full
modernization of the unit to be completed by the end of the year, a
military spokesperson said Tuesday. “In Tver region two modernized
Mig-31BM interceptors have started
their combat alert duty in the Western Military District,” said Col.
Oleg Kochetkov, the head of the district’s press service, adding that
the aircraft were delivered at the end of last year. “By the end of
2014, the Khotilovo MiG-31 squadron will be fully
re-equipped with the newer modification of the interceptors,” the
colonel said. The MiG-31BM is a two-seat supersonic long-distance
interceptor
aircraft developed by the Russian aircraft corporation MiG. It features
upgraded avionics, a 320 km detection range and a strike radius of 280
km. The plane’s multimode radar can detect up to 24 targets
simultaneously, engaging up to eight at the same time. The air fleet
upgrades are part of a series of modernization efforts by the Russian
Defense Ministry.

Russia has strengthened its airbase in Armenia with a batch of
overhauled MiG-29 fighter jets, a military official said Tuesday.
Russia’s 3624th Air Base at the Erebuni airport in Yerevan previously
hosted at least 16 MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets operating under the
framework of air defense agreements concluded between the members of the
Commonwealth of Independent States. “A batch of fourth-generation
MiG-29 multirole fighter jets has been
put in service with the Russian airbase at Eerebuni after an extensive
overhaul,” a spokesman for the Southern Military District, Col. Igor
Gorbul, said without specifying the number of aircraft. The Erebuni air
base is part of Russia’s 102nd military base in Gyumri, near Armenia’s
border with Turkey. The Russian military said in January that in
addition to fighter jets the Erebuni base will soon host a helicopter squadron armed with at least 18 attack and military transport choppers.

The Russian Navy has confirmed its intentions to field the
latest-generation Sukhoi Su-30SM 'Flanker' fighter as part of a wider
ramp-up of its fixed- and rotary-wing combat capabilities, state media
disclosed on 2 September. Having entered into negotiations with Irkut for a possible 12 Su-30SM
aircraft in mid-2011, the Russian Navy now expects to receive "several
tens" of these fighters, the Itar-Tass news agency quoted Navy Commander
in Chief Admiral Viktor Chirkov as saying during a press conference at
the Kuznetsov Naval Academy in Saint Petersburg. The twin-seat Su-30SM is based on the Su-30MKI for India, and
features an improved radar, communications and ejector-seat system.

Russia ‘Welcomes’ the US Destroyer by Moving Bastion Anti-Ship Missiles to Crimea

Unconfirmed news reports claim the Russian Navy is deploying land-based ‘Bastion’
anti-ship missile systems as a response to the recent U.S. move
entering two naval vessels to the Black Sea. The two American Arleigh
Burke class destroyer USS Truxtun (DDG-103) crossed the Bosphorus Strait Friday, headed into the Black Sea, as tensions simmer over Ukraine’s Crimea
region. The Russians also moved two naval combatants from the
Mediterranean Task Force back to the Black Sea Fleet. Tension is
mounting in the Crimea Peninsula with the preparations for a referendum on independence from Ukraine later this week.

As of today, the Truxtun remain the only US warship in the Black Sea following the southbound passage of FF(G)-50 USS Taylor
through the Bosphorus. The Taylor, a Perry class frigate was deployed
to the Black Sea before the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games started. USS Taylor
and the flag ship of the US 6th Fleet USS Mount Whitney were sent to
the Black Sea to help with the evacuation of US athletes and spectators
in case of an terror attack to the Games. However, when visiting the
Black Sea port of Samsun, Turkey, the frigate damaged her propelled and
had to be towed away to Souda, Crete for repairs.

The US Navy
said in a statement on Thursday that the ship was bound for the Black
Sea to conduct military exercises with Bulgarian and Romanian naval
forces. According to the Montreux Convention, warships of countries which do not border the Black Sea can only stay in the waters for 21 days. The Bastion
anti-ship missile system was deployed last night (8-9 March) to
Sevastopol from the Russian town of Anapa, Krasnodar, about 250 miles to
the East. Follow bystanders recorded the movement of Bastion anti-ship
launcher complex on the streets Crimea. The K-300P Bastion-P employs P-800 Yakhont (SS-N-26) anti-ship cruise missile hypersonic anti-ship missiles
carried on mobile transporter-erector-launchers (TEL) is a Russian. The
missiles are used as mobile coastal defence systems, having an
effective range of 300 km.

Six submarines will receive Russian Black Sea Fleet as a part of the 636.3 Project until 2016. Three submarines will be available to sailors this year. These are diesel-electric submarines: "Novorossiysk", "Rostov-on-Don," Stary Oskol." They belong to the third generation class of ships "Varshavyanka" (NATO – Kilo classification).

First one to appear on the Black Sea Fleet willl be
"Novorossiysk". The length of the submarine - 73 meters, width - 10,
maximum depth - 350 meters, submerged speed - twenty knots. According to public data, ships have powerful weapons and can strike with cruise missiles "Club-S" that are on board.

"Range
of fire of these missiles is about 300 kilometers. If the submarine
will be equipped with a complex "Kalibr", the range will be 1200-1500
kilometers. This complex, as reported by Russian Navy Commander Admiral
Viktor Chirkov, is adopted by the Russian Navy. So according to this
indicator Russian weapons comparable to American cruise missiles
"Tomahawk". With such a range missiles can hit targets in the countries
that are far outside of the Black Sea, i.e. somewhere in the region of
the Middle East," the vice-president of the Academy of Geopolitical
Problems, captain Konstantin Sivkov stated.

New
submarines have unique noise characteristics. Their immediate
predecessors, the submarine project 877 "Varshavyanka" were named by
Western naval experts "black hole" precisely because it had a very low
noise level. According to this indicator, they are clearly superior to
similar Western models.

Submarine Project 636.3, which
is a deeply modernized version of "Varshavianka" has even lower levels
of noise. And the availability of more sophisticated sonar system gives
significant superiority to the ships of the same class and even to the
atomic submarines.

New ships can solve a wide range of
tasks. The first one is fights with submarines. Especially in areas
close to the coast of the probable enemy and not in areas near the
Russian coast. It is also the defense of naval bases, coastal and marine
communications. Today, the level of tension in the Black Sea is
relatively low, said Konstantin Sivkov.

"We must
not forget that the Mediterranean basin is close, which is characterized
by high levels of tension. Under certain conditions, it can spread to
the Black Sea, especially if the conflict in Syria will not be ended,
although there have are certain prerequisites for this now. Or if
conflict with Iran will be unresolved. In this case, the flow of
refugees, terrorists may spread to the Black Sea. And there will be a
conflict on the Black Sea," he said.

According
to experts, the increase in the number of submarines in three years in
the Black Sea will immediately provide cover up to six units for the
coastal territory from attack from enemy ships. In the future, the total
number of submarine forces of the Black Sea Fleet should be 12-15 of
non-atomic submarines. This will effectively solve all problems.

The Russian company Almaz Antey introduced today the newest air
defense system from Russia, the S-350E . The new system was displayed
today for the first time in public at the MAKS 2013 airshow. The photos on this page were posted by Bill Sweetman of Aviation Week. “S-350 Vityaz is a highly mobile system, smaller than the S-400,
but using that system’s 9M96E2 missile” sweetman posted in the Ares
blog. The system is carried in three modules – the 50K6E command post,
the 50N6E radar (photo below) and the 12-round 50P6E launcher (shown
above). A single command post can control two radars and up to eight
launchers, and engage up to 16 aircraft or 12 missiles at a time.

The Vityaz (50R6)system
developed by Almaz-Antey is expected to replace the earliest variants
of the S-300 family, namely S-300PS and PMU PS-1A to be phased out of
service by 2015. Early deployment of Vityraz systems could begin next
year, if testing proceeds as planned. The S-350 was unveiled in June
2013 at the company’s Obukhov State Plant in St. Petersburg and.
According to Almaz Antey president, Vladislav Menshikov, the new system
is expected to be ready for testing in the fall of 2013.

The
system boasts advanced all-aspect phased array radar, a new mobile
command post and a launcher carrying 12 vertical-launch missiles, which
will use a variant of the 9M96 active radar homing missile. Similar
missiles are used by the S-400, the newer generation of the S-300, which is currently being deployed in Russia and offered for export.

A
unique feature introduced with Vityaz launchers is the capability fire
short-range missiles, in addition to the medium-long range capability of
the 9M96. The shorter range missile is likely to be a variant of the
9M100. According to some analysts, the range of the new system will
likely be 30-120km. According to these analysts, the system would evolve
to offer air defense with some limited tactical anti-missile
capabilities. Moscow aims to create a multi-layered grid to cover
Russia’s airspace, defending against threats ranging from drones, to
conventional manned aircraft, to cruise and ballistic missiles. Such
system could employ S-500, S-400, S-300E, as well as the shorter-range Pantsir systems.

The S-350E is based partially on the design of the South Korean KM-SAM Chun Koong system which Almaz-Antey helped designed. The Russian company developed three radar units for the KM-SAM,
and is also believed to have helped the Korean missile manufacturer
design the MK-SAM effectors. The Russian military closely followed the
Korean development and in 2007 decided to back the development of a
Russian derivative that eventually evolved into the Vityraz system.

The Russian MOD plans to buy at least 30 Vityaz systems before 2020, following the completion of the developmental testing.

The Admiral
Grigorovich was laid down in December 2010. Four more ships of the same
class are in various stages of construction at the shipyard. All six
frigates will be delivered to the Black Sea Fleet between 2014 and 2017
under two contracts with the Defense Ministry. The Project 11356 frigates, displacing 3,850 tons, are designed for
anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare as well as for air defense missions,
operating both independently or as part of convoys and naval task forces. The frigates
are armed with an eight-cell launcher for Kalibr and Klub (3M54E) anti-ship
and surface-to-surface missiles, a 100-mm main gun, Kashtan gun/missile
close-in air defense systems, Shtil vertical-launch air defense missile
systems, two torpedo tubes, an anti-submarine rocket system and a Ka-28
or Ka-31 helicopter, according to defense industry sites globalsecurity.org
and rusnavy.com. Deputy
commander of the Russian navy, Rear Admiral Viktor Bursuk, said Friday
that the vessels of this class are ideal for operations in the Black Sea
or in the Mediterranean, where Russia maintains a permanent naval task
force. Bursuk added that these ships could also be used for anti-piracy missions
in the Gulf of Aden, between Somalia and Yemen.

The death of a young ethnic Armenian in Ukraine amid escalating tensions
in the eastern regions of the country has raised more concerns in
Yerevan about the fate of compatriots living in this former Soviet
country engulfed in civil strife.

By a twist of fate, 29-year-old Ruben Avanesyan, who was killed during
clashes in Slavyansk, Donetsk region, on April 13, became the first
victim on the side of those opposed to the new government in Kyiv. In
January, Serhiy Nihoyan, a 20-year-old ethnic Armenian from Ukraine’s
Dnipropetrovsk region, was shot dead during a protest in the streets of
Kyiv, becoming one of the first victims among Euromaidan supporters and,
in fact, an icon in the struggle against the government of Viktor
Yanukovych that led to a change of power in late February.

The situation in Ukraine more and more reminds of a civil war and many
do not exclude that it will lead to the partition of the country. The
Russian and Russian-speaking population of the country’s eastern and
southern regions, not without the support of Moscow, are trying to
achieve federalization of the country and get an opportunity to join
Russia.

Armenians living in Ukraine are largely among the “Russian-speaking”
citizens of the country. Their number, according to official data,
reaches 100,000, however, according to unofficial estimates, there could
be as many as 600,000 Armenians living in Ukraine today, among them
both citizens and non-citizens.

Historically, Armenians aren’t strangers in Ukraine either as they used
to live in this part of the world still before the emergence of Kievan
Rus. Armenians have also lived for centuries in Crimea, the southernmost
region of Ukraine that declared its secession and joining Russia last
month.

Armenians living there along with the rest of the population also, in
fact, voted in a referendum for acceding to Russia. The Armenian
community of Crimea tried to remain neutral and not become the target of
one side or another in the civil conflict in Ukraine.

But the latest developments prompt that it will become increasingly
difficult for Armenians to remain neutral. Avanesyan, who was allegedly
killed by ultranationalists as he delivered “humanitarian supplies” to
rebels in Slavyansk, was proclaimed a hero by supporters of Ukraine’s
federalization. Nihoyan, who had lost his life for Ukraine’s European
orientation, was also included in the so-called Heaven’s Hundred, a list
of killed Euromaidan supporters revered as heroes in western and
central Ukraine today.

The Armenian community in Ukraine is apparently going through hard
times. Armenians tend not to talk to reporters, but in private
conversations to the question of whether they would like to live as part
of Ukraine or Russia, many in eastern regions of the country
acknowledge that the living standards in Russia are higher today. This
is perhaps the main motivation of Armenians who are involved in the
unrest in eastern Ukraine on the side of those advocating
federalization.

But there is another factor – the position of Armenia. Yerevan is
considered to be the most loyal ally of Russia and its “extra vote” at
international instances. Armenia was among a dozen countries that voted
against the UN General Assembly resolution that reaffirmed Ukraine’s
territorial integrity and condemned the annexation of Crimea by Russia.
This stance at the UN as well as earlier remarks by Armenian President
Serzh Sargsyan regarding the “right of self-determination” of Crimea
caused a diplomatic protest from Kyiv that recalled its ambassador from
Yerevan. But in Ukraine itself there seems to be no backlash yet against
the local Armenian community.

About 80% of respondents embraced by a public opinion survey conducted by Gallup International Association in Armenia, endorsed Russia’s decision to annex Crimea. The findings of the survey were made public today by Aram Navasardyan, the chairman of the Armenian Marketing Association, which is the official representative of Gallup International Association in Armenia. The study was conducted on 8-18 April in the format of personal interviews in all regions of Armenia and administrative districts of Yerevan involving 1,067 men and women of different ages. Also 73% of respondents said that Armenia should officially recognize Crimea as Russian territory. About 92% of respondents were informed about developments in Ukraine and 77% disapproved them. "The findings reflect Armenians’ sentiments concerning the peoples’ rights to expression of their will, “ said Navasardyan. He said a similar problem exists in Armenia – it is the Karabakh conflict. "And although political analysts cite various reasons to prove similarities or differences between these two issues, ordinary people draw clear parallels between the two issues”, said Navasardyan.

n
an appearance on Fox News this morning, House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) reported that in addition to massing tens of
thousands of troops on the eastern border of Ukraine, Russia is
building up its military forces in the separatist Georgian region of
South Ossetia. Rogers suggested that Russian president Vladimir Putin is
considering an invasion of both Georgia and Armenia, as part of an
effort to create an overland link between Russia and Iran.“They
are moving some of their most advanced equipment into South Ossetia,”
said Rogers. “There is no reason to do that. The Georgian army really
poses no threat. That’s certainly concerning.”Related: Russia’s Putin Calls Obama to Discuss U.S. Proposal on UkraineRogers
later added, “I would ask why is he moving the equipment that he is
into South Ossetia up in Georgia, which makes really makes no sense
other than they are contemplating maybe using those armor columns to
drive through Georgia down to Armenia to create a land bridge to Iran.”Rogers,
who this week announced that he would not seek reelection in November,
recently returned from a trip to Georgia and Ukraine. In Georgia,
according to Intelligence Committee staff, he personally saw camps being
set up by the Russian military. Rogers also met with the countries’
defense ministers and intelligence officials.It
would not be surprising for Russia to seek closer ties with Iran, nor
for Putin to seek a direct trade route between the two nations. Both
are, to different degrees, suffering under international sanctions –
sanctions that may soon tighten on Russia as a result of its invasion of
the Crimean peninsula.The news of a Russian build-up in South
Ossetia comes as tens of thousands of Russian combat troops remain
massed on the eastern border of Ukraine.Related: Stopping Putin with U.S. Gas Exports is Full of Hot AirPutin
telephoned president Obama over the weekend, and the two had a
discussion that the White House characterized as Russia seeking to
deescalate the situation in Ukraine through diplomatic means. Russian
officials described the conversation as Putin alleging further
violations of the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.Putin has
claimed that the Russian invasion and speedy annexation of Ukraine’s
Crimean peninsula was justified because it was done to protect ethnic
Russians in that region.The upshot of the call was that Secretary
John Kerry made an unscheduled trip to Paris to meet with Russian
foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.While some speculated that Putin
made the call as part of an effort to find a “way out” of the tense
situation in the Ukraine, Rogers summarily dismissed that possibility.Related: Russia Criticizes UN Resolution Condemning Crimea’s Secession“He is absolutely not looking for a way out,” Rogers said.Asked
about the troop build-up on the Ukrainian border, Rogers said, “We see
tens of thousands and it is not just the number of troops, it’s the kind
of troops and the kinds of configuration. What units are on that border
and what could they accomplish. They have everything they need already I
believe on that eastern border to go into Ukraine if they decide they
want to do it.”According to Rogers, intelligence suggests that
Putin’s primary goal in Ukraine is most likely to create a “land bridge”
from Crimea to the breakaway Transinistria region of Moldova, to the
west, which has been seeking a connection to the Russian Federation
similar to the annexation of Crimea.By taking control of the
southern part of Ukraine, Rogers said, Putin would secure a source of
fresh water for the Crimean peninsula as well as an overland connection
to Transinistria.Related: U.S. Bans Licenses for Military Exports to RussiaAsked
if there is reason to believe that Russia would move into eastern
Ukraine as well, Rogers did not discount the possibility, saying that
Russia currently has special forces teams and intelligence agenst
working to foment unrest in the eastern Ukraine, which Russia could
eventually use as a pretext for invasion.Speaking on CNN’s State
of the Union, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, agreed that Putin looks poised to enter
Ukraine.“There are 40-plus thousand troops. They are staged in
various areas. To people who watch this, it looks like an invasion
force,” she said. “Putin has said it’s an exercise. Leaves a question
mark.”Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Russian Ambassador to the
U.S. Sergey Kisliyak dismissed the possibility that Russia would ever
retreat from Crimea, asserting that it is now part of Russia.“We
are now in the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said. “There
was an expressed will of the people of Crimea to be part of the Russian
Federation.”However, asked if Russia was planning to invade the
rest of Ukraine, he said, “We have no intent and no interest in crossing
the border. We have our forces conducting exercises in the territory of
the Russian Federation.”- See more at:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/03/30/Intelligence-Chair-Fears-Putin-Has-New-Target-Armenia#sthash.bZe8VpWG.dpuf

n
an appearance on Fox News this morning, House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) reported that in addition to massing tens of
thousands of troops on the eastern border of Ukraine, Russia is
building up its military forces in the separatist Georgian region of
South Ossetia. Rogers suggested that Russian president Vladimir Putin is
considering an invasion of both Georgia and Armenia, as part of an
effort to create an overland link between Russia and Iran.“They
are moving some of their most advanced equipment into South Ossetia,”
said Rogers. “There is no reason to do that. The Georgian army really
poses no threat. That’s certainly concerning.”Related: Russia’s Putin Calls Obama to Discuss U.S. Proposal on UkraineRogers
later added, “I would ask why is he moving the equipment that he is
into South Ossetia up in Georgia, which makes really makes no sense
other than they are contemplating maybe using those armor columns to
drive through Georgia down to Armenia to create a land bridge to Iran.”Rogers,
who this week announced that he would not seek reelection in November,
recently returned from a trip to Georgia and Ukraine. In Georgia,
according to Intelligence Committee staff, he personally saw camps being
set up by the Russian military. Rogers also met with the countries’
defense ministers and intelligence officials.It
would not be surprising for Russia to seek closer ties with Iran, nor
for Putin to seek a direct trade route between the two nations. Both
are, to different degrees, suffering under international sanctions –
sanctions that may soon tighten on Russia as a result of its invasion of
the Crimean peninsula.The news of a Russian build-up in South
Ossetia comes as tens of thousands of Russian combat troops remain
massed on the eastern border of Ukraine.Related: Stopping Putin with U.S. Gas Exports is Full of Hot AirPutin
telephoned president Obama over the weekend, and the two had a
discussion that the White House characterized as Russia seeking to
deescalate the situation in Ukraine through diplomatic means. Russian
officials described the conversation as Putin alleging further
violations of the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.Putin has
claimed that the Russian invasion and speedy annexation of Ukraine’s
Crimean peninsula was justified because it was done to protect ethnic
Russians in that region.The upshot of the call was that Secretary
John Kerry made an unscheduled trip to Paris to meet with Russian
foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.While some speculated that Putin
made the call as part of an effort to find a “way out” of the tense
situation in the Ukraine, Rogers summarily dismissed that possibility.Related: Russia Criticizes UN Resolution Condemning Crimea’s Secession“He is absolutely not looking for a way out,” Rogers said.Asked
about the troop build-up on the Ukrainian border, Rogers said, “We see
tens of thousands and it is not just the number of troops, it’s the kind
of troops and the kinds of configuration. What units are on that border
and what could they accomplish. They have everything they need already I
believe on that eastern border to go into Ukraine if they decide they
want to do it.”According to Rogers, intelligence suggests that
Putin’s primary goal in Ukraine is most likely to create a “land bridge”
from Crimea to the breakaway Transinistria region of Moldova, to the
west, which has been seeking a connection to the Russian Federation
similar to the annexation of Crimea.By taking control of the
southern part of Ukraine, Rogers said, Putin would secure a source of
fresh water for the Crimean peninsula as well as an overland connection
to Transinistria.Related: U.S. Bans Licenses for Military Exports to RussiaAsked
if there is reason to believe that Russia would move into eastern
Ukraine as well, Rogers did not discount the possibility, saying that
Russia currently has special forces teams and intelligence agenst
working to foment unrest in the eastern Ukraine, which Russia could
eventually use as a pretext for invasion.Speaking on CNN’s State
of the Union, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, agreed that Putin looks poised to enter
Ukraine.“There are 40-plus thousand troops. They are staged in
various areas. To people who watch this, it looks like an invasion
force,” she said. “Putin has said it’s an exercise. Leaves a question
mark.”Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Russian Ambassador to the
U.S. Sergey Kisliyak dismissed the possibility that Russia would ever
retreat from Crimea, asserting that it is now part of Russia.“We
are now in the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said. “There
was an expressed will of the people of Crimea to be part of the Russian
Federation.”However, asked if Russia was planning to invade the
rest of Ukraine, he said, “We have no intent and no interest in crossing
the border. We have our forces conducting exercises in the territory of
the Russian Federation.”- See more at:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/03/30/Intelligence-Chair-Fears-Putin-Has-New-Target-Armenia#sthash.bZe8VpWG.dpuf

In
an appearance on Fox News this morning, House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) reported that in addition to massing tens of
thousands of troops on the eastern border of Ukraine, Russia is
building up its military forces in the separatist Georgian region of
South Ossetia. Rogers suggested that Russian president Vladimir Putin is
considering an invasion of both Georgia and Armenia, as part of an
effort to create an overland link between Russia and Iran.“They
are moving some of their most advanced equipment into South Ossetia,”
said Rogers. “There is no reason to do that. The Georgian army really
poses no threat. That’s certainly concerning.”Rogers
later added, “I would ask why is he moving the equipment that he is
into South Ossetia up in Georgia, which makes really makes no sense
other than they are contemplating maybe using those armor columns to
drive through Georgia down to Armenia to create a land bridge to Iran.”Rogers,
who this week announced that he would not seek reelection in November,
recently returned from a trip to Georgia and Ukraine. In Georgia,
according to Intelligence Committee staff, he personally saw camps being
set up by the Russian military. Rogers also met with the countries’
defense ministers and intelligence officials. It would not be surprising
for Russia to seek closer ties with Iran, nor for Putin to seek a
direct trade route between the two nations. Both are, to different
degrees, suffering under international sanctions – sanctions that may
soon tighten on Russia as a result of its invasion of the Crimean
peninsula. The
news of a Russian build-up in South Ossetia comes as tens of thousands
of Russian combat troops remain massed on the eastern border of Ukraine.
Putin telephoned president Obama over the weekend, and the two had a
discussion that the White House characterized as Russia seeking to
deescalate the situation in Ukraine through diplomatic means. Russian
officials described the conversation as Putin alleging further
violations of the rights of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. Putin
has claimed that the Russian invasion and speedy annexation of
Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula was justified because it was done to protect
ethnic Russians in that region. The upshot of the call was that
Secretary John Kerry made an unscheduled trip to Paris to meet with
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov. While some speculated that Putin
made the call as part of an effort to find a “way out” of the tense
situation in the Ukraine, Rogers summarily dismissed that possibility.“He
is absolutely not looking for a way out,” Rogers said. Asked about the
troop build-up on the Ukrainian border, Rogers said, “We see tens of
thousands and it is not just the number of troops, it’s the kind of
troops and the kinds of configuration. What units are on that border and
what could they accomplish. They have everything they need already I
believe on that eastern border to go into Ukraine if they decide they
want to do it.”According
to Rogers, intelligence suggests that Putin’s primary goal in Ukraine
is most likely to create a “land bridge” from Crimea to the breakaway
Transinistria region of Moldova, to the west, which has been seeking a
connection to the Russian Federation similar to the annexation of
Crimea. By taking control of the southern part of Ukraine, Rogers said,
Putin would secure a source of fresh water for the Crimean peninsula as
well as an overland connection to Transinistria.Asked
if there is reason to believe that Russia would move into eastern
Ukraine as well, Rogers did not discount the possibility, saying that
Russia currently has special forces teams and intelligence agents
working to foment unrest in the eastern Ukraine, which Russia could
eventually use as a pretext for invasion. Speaking on CNN’s State of the
Union, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the chair of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, agreed that Putin looks poised to enter Ukraine.
“There
are 40-plus thousand troops. They are staged in various areas. To
people who watch this, it looks like an invasion force,” she said.
“Putin has said it’s an exercise. Leaves a question mark.” Speaking on
ABC’s This Week, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kisliyak
dismissed the possibility that Russia would ever retreat from Crimea,
asserting that it is now part of Russia. "We are now in the territory of
the Russian Federation,” he said. “There was an expressed will of the
people of Crimea to be part of the Russian Federation.”However,
asked if Russia was planning to invade the rest of Ukraine, he said,
“We have no intent and no interest in crossing the border. We have our
forces conducting exercises in the territory of the Russian Federation.”

As Georgians drive along their
central east-west highway at night, they can see the lights of a Russian
military base within South Ossetia's de facto line of control. It is a
constant reminder of a clear and present threat, and their military
defeat in 2008 by Russia. After Crimea especially, many worry that
Russia once again is looking to expand its borders, or remind its
neighbours that orientating themselves to the West could have negative
consequences.The rules of the game seem to have changed. How far
is Russia now willing to go to turn countries like Georgia back from
their path of Euro-Atlantic integration with NATO and the EU? Key
events are happening this year including the expected signing of
Georgia's EU Association Agreement and NATO meetings, which may
determine Georgia's future membership status.

Next hotspot

Against
this backdrop, Georgians are jumpy. Mindful of their country's
inter-ethnic makeup, some believe Samtskhe-Javakheti could be the next
hotspot, because of notions that ethnic Armenians there cannot be
trusted. Despite any clear evidence, there are rumours that many ethnic Armenians hold Russian passports.

Like
the rest of Georgia, Samtskhe-Javakheti suffers from poverty and
unemployment. The difference is that here, there is an ethnic Armenian
majority. Many don't speak Georgian, and not all of them feel connected
to Georgian wider society. Ideas about preserving Armenian culture and
language have widespread appeal. Ethnic Armenians have so far not seen
the benefits of learning the Georgian language, at least in majority
Armenian towns.

Javakheti saw political disturbances in the 2000s.
But nationalist Armenian activists lost their momentum, were jailed, or
brought into the Georgian political fold. A lot of popular frustration
was based around the closure of an important source of support for the
local economy - a Russian base in Samtskhe-Javakheti itself.

That
also helps to explain in part why ethnic Armenians are today more
pro-Russian in their outlook. Many travel to Russia for work, sending
home vital remittances to support their families. And why shouldn't
ethnic Armenians see Russia in a positive light? Russia, unlike Georgia,
is a source of employment, and opportunity.

Splitting Georgia in half

So
this is how the 'Russian' threat goes: Given the right excuse - i.e.
inter-ethnic strife or instability that could emanate from existing
antagonisms (for instance between two powerful political adversaries:
the Georgian and Armenian Orthodox Churches), Russian forces would not
have to travel far to link up 'pro-Russian' Samtskhe-Javakheti with
South Ossetia, and split Georgia in half.

To Samtskhe-Javakheti's
south lies Armenia, Russia's ally. Gyumri in Armenia is home to a
strategic Russian military base. Russia provided material support to the
Armenians in their war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh and last
year the Armenian government pulled out of trade and association
negotiations with the EU and announced it would join Putin's Eurasian
Economic Union.

To suggest that new trouble is looming could be
dangerous and downright mistaken. Most analysts agree that Armenia is
unlikely to support instability in Javakheti. Though Armenia has a
working relationship with Russia, one of the last things the country
needs is a conflict next door. The Georgian-Armenian border is its sole
route to the outside world. (The Turkish and Azeri sides are closed).

Georgia's
fear of insecurity is understandable given all that it has already been
through with Russia, and it is a sign that what has happened in Ukraine
is having wide-reaching and unexpected consequences. Some media outlets
have already played up threats to Georgian territorial integrity.
Georgian NGOs released a statement criticising this report, which implied that Georgia could lose the Javakheti region to Turkish interests. Domestic fears may do more to antagonise inter-ethnic relations than any cynical ploy from the Kremlin.

As Vladimir Putin completes Russia's annexation of Crimea, Azerbaijan
is worried that his next move will be to shift his attention southward. The Caspian Sea nation, the only westward route for central Asian oil
and gas that bypasses Russia, is finding itself hemmed in by Putin's
regional ambitions. Russian troops are already stationed in neighboring
Georgia and Armenia and just four months ago, Putin said Russia will
"never leave" the region.

That's stirring angst in a nation that was captured by Soviet Russia
in 1920. Azerbaijan, the third-largest ex-Soviet oil producer, has spent
the past two decades trying to establish itself as an alternative gas
source to Europe. Home to the Shah Deniz field, in December the country
struck a 45-billion-dollar deal with a BP-led group.

"If the West doesn't do anything to stop Russia, they will be
emboldened to take back Azerbaijan by force as they did a hundred years
ago," said Zahir Rahimov, a 39-year-old resident of Baku, referring to
the Bolshevik takeover.

Officials already complain about feeling the Kremlin's pressure. The
push from Moscow to join Putin's new customs union, a project he wants
to rival the European Union, is similar to the squeeze put on Ukraine,
according to Siyavus Novruzov, a senior member of the ruling New
Azerbaijan Party.

Putin is extending Russia's reach as he tries to rebuild the prestige
it lost after the end of the Cold War. To Azerbaijan's west, Russia has
kept a base with about 4,000 soldiers in Armenia since a cease-fire in
the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1994. In Georgia to the northwest, Putin
left forces stationed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia after a 2008 war.

"As for the Trans-Caucasus region, Russia will never leave this
region," Putin said on 2 December after surveying Russian troops at the
base in Armenia. "On the contrary, we will make our place here even
stronger. We will strengthen our position here, drawing on the best of
what our forebears left us and with the support of good relations with
all countries in the region, including Armenia."

While Putin hasn't directly threatened Azerbaijan and an invasion is
unlikely, his comments underscore the fact that he can use his influence
in neighboring countries to hem in Azerbaijan, which has been ruled by
the Aliyev family for four decades.

"Azerbaijan is going to be next after Ukraine," according to Arastun
Orujlu, head of the Center for East-West Studies, a research group in
the capital Baku. "Russia will step up pressure."

Azerbaijan's position is complicated by the fact that it never
courted the US and the European Union the way that ex- Soviet satellites
such as Poland and the Baltic states did. Azerbaijan hasn't applied to
join either the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the European Union
and has instead pursued an independent foreign policy. The country has forged closer ties with Israel by buying its advanced
weapons including drones and missile systems and NATO-member Turkey,
with whom it signed an agreement on military cooperation.

The existing accord with Turkey is limited to training and arms
purchases by Azerbaijan. The nations are negotiating a broader military
deal to guarantee mutual assistance in case of an attack, Novruz
Mammadov, the head of the presidential administration's
foreign-relations department, said on the ANS television channel on
Sunday. Azebaijan's strategy of plotting a course between Russia and the EU
has left it "even more vulnerable to Russian pressure" to join the
planned Eurasian Union, Richard Kauzlarich, the US envoy in Baku in
1994-1997, told the Azeri service of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty
March 7.

While Putin has used the simmering conflicts in the Caucasus to keep
Russia's southern neighbors "off-balance," putting at risk investments
made in energy links binding Azerbaijan with Europe, such tactics have
failed to undermine the projects, according to Matthew Bryza, the US
ambassador to Azerbaijan in 2010-2011. Even so, the country's unaligned status puts it in a precarious
position as Putin challenges the post-Cold War world order, according to
Vafa Quluzada, a former foreign policy adviser to ex-President Heydar
Aliyev, the father of current leader Ilham Aliyev.

"After Crimea, there are no longer any rules of the game for Russia,"
Quluzada, the former presidential adviser, said by phone. "It can take
unpredictable actions. Our strategic partners should bear this in mind
and take action before it's not too late."

Aliyev, who has won plaudits from the US and Europe for striking an
independent foreign policy, he hasn't been immune to international
criticism, with his government ranked as one of the most corrupt and
repressive in the world by Transparency International and Reporters
Without Borders. Dozens of activists, journalists, bloggers and other critics of
Aliyev were arrested or convicted of "bogus charges" in the 18 months
leading up to the presidential election last October, according to Human
Rights Watch.

Regardless of the human rights violations, Azerbaijan remains a
crucial energy supplier to several EU nations. Italy, which receives
Azeri crude shipments via Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, is
Azerbaijan's biggest trade partner, according to data on the State
Statistics Committee website. Germany and France come second and third, with Russia in fourth place.

Oil and gas exports made up 95 per cent of total Azeri exports last
year, according to the central bank. The 74-billion-dollar economy, the
former Soviet Union's fourth biggest after Russia, Kazakhstan and
Ukraine, grew 5.8 per cent last year and the International Monetary Fund
forecasts a 5.6 per cent expansion this year.

Russia's main lever over Azerbaijan is its sway over Armenia, which
it can use to ratchet up tension in the frozen Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict, said Quluzada, the former foreign- policy adviser. That
threatens to unsettle investors such as BP, which with partners has
invested more than 40 billion dollars in energy projects in the past two
decades.

"Russia wants the cease-fire — this no-war-no-peace situation — to
exert pressure on Azerbaijan," Quluzada said. "It is also using the
situation to keep western interests under constant threat."

Armenia, backed by Russia, took over the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh
region and seven adjacent districts from Azerbaijan. Large-scale
hostilities ended with a cease-fire in 1994, with the sides yet to sign a
peace agreement.

"What's happening in Crimea today first started in Nagorno-Karabakh,"
said Asim Mollazade, a member of Azeri parliament's foreign relations
committee. "It was the same scenario with the same participants.
Azerbaijan lost 20 per cent of its territory."

Georgia, the third South Caucasus country, was routed by Russia in an
August 2008 war over the separatist province of South Ossetia in the
biggest show of force outside its borders since the Soviet breakup in
1991 until the Crimea conflict. Russia has an agreement to provide military assistance to Armenia. In
2012, troops from Russia and four ex-Soviet republics took part in
maneuvers in the country, the biggest military drills ever hosted by the
landlocked country, according to IHS Global Insight in London.

"Russia can attack Azerbaijan from three fronts: from Karabakh, from
the border in Dagestan and by sea," Quluzada said. "Russia is holding
drills in Dagestan and the Caspian Sea. It has modernised its Caspian
fleet. It's clear that Russia isn't preparing for a war with Iran. Our
strategic partners should bear this in mind and take action before it's
not too late."

While the crisis in Ukraine will further propel Azerbaijan to
solidify ties with the West, it expects Russia to lash out against it in
response, according to Mollazade.

"Regrettably, Russia is seeking the restoration of the former Soviet
Union through the customs union and the planned Eurasian Union," he
said.

“Russia is the guarantor of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and Armenia as well as the Karabakh. If we assume that Russia abdicates these functions, the territorial integrity of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh will not be ensured, since Russia is a proportional power, thereby, countries in the zone adjacent to Russia can maintain their territorial integrity solely due to good neighborly relations with Russia,”- an ideologue of the Putin regime, the ideologist of the United Russia Party, member of the advisory council by the State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin Alexander Dugin came up with such a sensational statement, haqqin.az reports citing the Armenian sources.

According to him, “Today Karabakh belongs to Armenia, because the Armenians have made a deal with Russia.”

In his interview, Alexander Dugin also voiced overt threats against Azerbaijan and reveals Russia’s secret plan to destabilize the situation in Azerbaijan: “Azerbaijan has Talysh and Lezgin factors. There are many other ones, the gravity of which Azerbaijan cannot even imagine. Russia has a lot of leverage to speak friendly in the language of a dialogue or a hostile language.”

The pro-Kremlin politician is vexed with Azerbaijan’s position on the territorial integrity of Ukraine: “The very fact that Baku is opposing Russia shows that Azerbaijanis challenge us like Saakashvili and the Kiev junta, and we already know how it ends… If Russia starts talking to Azerbaijan, who demonstrates the negative attitude to it, indicated in the vote in the UN General Assembly, there are other factors that Russia may resort to apart from Nagorno-Karabakh,”- Dugin stressed, adding that unlike Azerbaijan “Armenia has proved itself as a faithful friend, and we truly appreciate this, whereas Azerbaijan has unexpectedly betrayed us, that we have also taken a note of.

Will we keep silent? Surely, not. They are on the path of self-destruction,”- said one of the masterminds of Putin’s Eurasian Union.

Tensions between Russia and the
West are hitting a new peak. And in this face-off, Moscow has an
extraordinary piece of leverage: a super-sophisticated, bomber-killing
missile that it once threatened to sell to Iran.

Last week, Reuters first reported Russia was preparing an oil-for-goods deal with Iran worth up to $20 billion.
An unnamed Iranian official told the news service that the barter would
include Russian weapons. And that was before further signs of Russia’s shadow invasion
of Ukraine emerged Monday, when crowds spontaneously appeared in three
major eastern cities to welcome the troops amassed over the border. The
Daily Beast reported that associates of Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed
and Kremlin-friendly Ukrainian president, were meeting with pro-Russian activists. One keen-eyed photographer captured a man wearing a Russian Airborne forces tee-shirt at one of the protests.

The
trade between Moscow and Tehran would alleviate the economic pressure
on Iran that the White House has said helped bring the Islamic Republic
to the bargaining table. It may even sink the talks President Obama is
hoping will persuade Iran to defang its nuclear program. If
those talks fail, then Russia has the leverage to equip Iran with the
missile that could defend its centrifuges and reactors from allied air
strikes, the S-300.

“I
could see as part of this deal [between Tehran and Moscow] that they
would agree to transfer advanced missiles to Iran,” said Mark Dubowitz,
the executive director of the hawkish Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies and an expert in the Iran sanctions. “If [Russian president
Vladimir] Putin became angry enough over the West’s financial punishment
of Russia, he could put in play the S-300 deal.”

The
S-300 has long been Moscow’s top-of-the-line air defense system. The
current model is comparable to U.S. Patriot missile batteries. The S-300
deploys sophisticated radars, launch vehicles and missiles to shoot
aircraft and even ballistic missiles out of the sky. Russia has also
threatened to sell the system to Syria, whose hapless air force was
hacked by Israel in 2007, rendering its anti-aircraft defenses useless
when Israel bombed the al-Kibar nuclear facility.

In
the second term of the George W. Bush, Russia came close to selling and
training Iran’s military on how to use the sophisticated S-300 system.
But then in 2010, the Russians pulled back from the sale during
negotiations over U.N. Security Council resolution 1929, the resolution
the Obama administration used to persuade banks and finance ministries
all over the world to isolate most of Iran’s economy.

Moscow ended
up supporting that resolution and cancelling the sale—which was
considered a triumph of the Obama administration’s foreign policy at the
time. But Russia also negotiated an important loophole. While the
resolution bans almost every possible arms sale imaginable, it still
technically allows U.N. member states to sell Iran air defense weaponry such as the S-300 system.

“There
was no prohibition of the S-300 in the resolution,” said Michael
McFaul, who left his post earlier this year as the U.S. ambassador to
Russia and played a role in 2010 as a senior White House staff member in
negotiating the Iran resolution. McFaul said Russia’s president at the
time, Dimitry Medvedev, at first privately and then publicly said the
spirit of the resolution would prohibit the sale of the S-300. “But he
was not obligated to do that by the resolution itself,” McFaul said.

McFaul
declined to comment on whether he suspected Russia would actually
provide Iran with the air defense system. Dubowitz, however, says he is
concerned Moscow could renege on its promise not to sell Iran the S-300. One Obama administration
official told The Daily Beast the United States has seen no evidence to
date that Russia would renege on its promise not to sell Iran the S-300
system.

But signals from
Moscow and Tehran have already drawn concern from Congress. On Monday,
the two senators who drafted the crippling sanctions legislation Obama
has implemented against Iran urged the White House to re-impose some of
the sanctions it temporarily lifted this fall when the nuclear talks
with Iran began.

In
the letter, Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican, and Sen. Robert Menendez, a
Democrat, wrote that they were alarmed the barter agreement reported by
Reuters “may provide for the transfer to Iran of items of significant
value to Iran’s military and its nuclear program.”

For
now, the Obama administration is hoping that Russia will consider the
potential costs to its own economy if it continues to defy the west in
Ukraine. Speaking to reporters on Monday, State Department spokeswoman
Jen Psaki pointed to how Russia’s economy has already experienced
turbulence after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

“The
World Bank has warned that Russia’s economy could shrink by 1.8 percent
this year even without additional economic sanctions,” she said. “The
Russian currency has experienced sharp volatility between March 3rd and
April 7th. The Central Bank of Russia spent $25.8 billion to prop up
the ruble. All of these are specific impacts that we’re seeing in the
Russian economy.”

Western
sanctions against Russia so far have been limited and focused on banning
the travel and seizing the assets of senior officials in President
Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. President Obama, however, has also held
out the prospect that sanctions could be much tougher against Russia if
its military invades eastern Ukraine. Indeed, the executive order Obama
signed implementing the first round of sanctions also said the United
States was prepared to implement much tougher sanctions on key sectors
of Russia’s economy such as mining.

Zachary
Goldman, the executive director of the center on law and security at
the New York University School of Law, said Russia has considerable
leverage on western countries, but not as much as the United States and
Europe have on Russia.

“Can
the Russians impose pain on the U.S. and its allies in Europe?
Probably,” said Goldman, who served as a policy adviser in the Treasury
Department’s office that tracks terrorist financing. “Can it impose as
much pain on us as we can to them? Probably not.” Goldman however
pointed out that Russia could jeopardize western investments in Russia, a
knotty international law problem that often takes months if not years
to resolve.

The
United States also needs Russia in the negotiations with Iran over its
nuclear program. Another round of those talks is scheduled to start this
week in Vienna, Austria. Russia participates in those talks along with
China, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. U.S. officials tell The
Daily Beast that to date Russian diplomats participating in the Iran
negotiations have not drawn any linkage between them and the stand off
over Ukraine. But if the pressure mounts on Moscow, then the West may
end up paying the price for punishing Russia, at the bargaining table
with Iran.

With the annexation of Crimea, Turkey faces a stronger and bolder Russian naval power in the Black Sea

With the annexation of Crimea, Turkey faces a stronger and bolder
Russian naval power in the Black Sea. A resurgent Russia may be tempted
to exploit its temporary naval dominance to alter current Black Sea
energy exploitation and transportation arrangements more in its favor
and to the detriment of Turkey and its partners in the Caucasus. The
politically motivated stoppage of Turkey’s National Warship Project’s
production schedule has created a window of vulnerability in Turkey’s
Black Sea naval defenses in the face of rapidly rising Russian naval
power.Background: The $3 billion “National Warship” Project, known by its Turkish
abbreviation MILGEM, seeks to upgrade the Turkish fleet by replacing
and augmenting its older foreign-made warships with eight domestically
produced Ada-class anti-submarine warfare corvettes and subsequently
four intermediate-class TF 100 frigates. After gaining experience from
the building of the slightly larger but more lethal TF 100 anti-air
warfare frigates, Turkey then intends to build a series of TF 2000
frigates. Double the size of the TF 100, the TF 2000 anti-air warfare
frigate will significantly advance the Turkish fleet’s transformation
into a blue-water navy.Aside from being an intermediate phase for the development of the TF
2000, the TF 100 frigates are of present vital importance as
replacements for the German-made Meko 200 frigates that form an
essential component of Turkey’s force projection in the Black Sea. The
TF 100 frigates will be the first Turkish vessels to carry the
American-manufactured RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) system
capable of countering the current generation of supersonic anti-ship
missiles.Prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the head of Turkey’s
Undersecretariat of Defense Industries Murat Bayar publicly acknowledged
the need to replace the Meko 200 frigates with the ESSM-equipped TF
100s by 2020.However, in September 2013, upon the commissioning of the TCG Büyükada,
the second of MILGEM’s eight Ada-class corvettes, the Turkish
government abruptly canceled RMK Marine’s contract to build the
remaining six corvettes. A subsidiary the Turkish conglomerate Koç
Holding A.Ş., the cancellation of RMK Marine’s contract appears to be
part of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political vendetta
against the Koç family for providing assistance to anti-Erdogan
protesters from a Koç-owned Istanbul hotel during the summer 2013 Gezi
Park demonstrations.The next two corvettes will be produced by Turkey’s national shipyard
while the government evaluates bids for the building of the four
remaining corvettes. Despite Undersecretary Bayar’s optimistic
forecasts that the government’s cancellations will delay the production
schedule for the Ada-class corvettes by only one year, the cascade
effect of the production stoppage in setting back the building of the TF
100 frigates, as well as the subsequent TF 2000s, has created a four-
to eight-year window of vulnerability for Turkey in the Black Sea
vis-à-vis a resurgent Russia.Turkey’s strategic vulnerability was not anticipated because of the
view in Turkish policy circles that Turkey enjoys a relative parity with
Russia in the Black Sea. However, the approximate parity exists only
when Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is matched against all the major assets
of the Turkish navy. Prior to the Crimean conflict, Russia’s Black Sea
fleet consisted of 24 major surface combatants and one diesel submarine
while Turkey’s major naval assets consist of approximately 24 surface
combatants and 14 submarines. The parity is illusory as it is unlikely
that Turkey would be able to deploy all or most of its naval assets in a
Black Sea conflict.Turkey’s ability to deter Russian assertiveness in what Moscow regards
as its greater Black Sea sphere of influence, including the eastern
Mediterranean and the Caucasus, was already questionable. As Russia’s
Black Sea Fleet disposed of Georgia’s miniscule navy during the 2008
Russo-Georgian War, Ankara passively watched the Russian military
destroy Turkey’s infrastructure investments in Georgia. Turkey’s
supposed naval parity did not afford Ankara any significant policy
options.Indeed, Ankara revealed its reluctance to provoke Moscow into
challenging the Montreux Convention, the 1936 treaty granting Ankara
exclusive control over the Bosphorous Straits and the Dardanelles and
restricting the transit of heavy warships through this strategic Black
Sea-Eastern Mediterranean access corridor.Implications: With the annexation of Crimea, Turkey faces a stronger and bolder
Russian naval power in the Black Sea. Russia now possesses the
Ukrainian navy’s submarine and several, if not most, of Ukraine’s 11
major surface combatants. Even without the Ukraine’s naval assets,
Russia’s own new additions to its Black Sea Fleet will enable Moscow to
dominate the region. Russia recently put to sea the first of its six
Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates. All six frigates are designated for
service in the Black Sea Fleet.Larger and more advanced than Turkey’s four modified Meko 200
Barbaros-class frigates, each of the six Admiral Grigorovich-class
frigates will be the first vessels equipped with the state-of-the-art,
supersonic Shtil-1 Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) air defense system.
Moscow expects all six frigates to be in service in the Black Sea Fleet
by the end of 2016. Turkey’s now delayed TF 100 frigates, slated to
carry the ESSM system, would be the only Turkish vessels with a
comparable SAM capability.Within the same 2016 timeframe, Russia will also add six newly improved
Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines to its Black Sea Fleet ahead of
Turkey’s deployment of an equivalent number of Ada-class anti-submarine
corvettes. These two Russian procurement programs alone will quickly
tilt the balance of naval forces in Russia’s favor, giving Russia a
significant strategic advantage for a window of four to eight years
depending on the pace of Turkey’s resumed production schedule.In addition, Russia is in the process of acquiring two French-made
Mistral-class amphibious assault ships, to be named the Vladivostok and
Sevastapol, the latter being the namesake of the Russian Black Sea
Fleet’s base in Crimea. The amphibious assault ships are helicopter
carriers that can accommodate 16 attack helicopters as well as 13 battle
tanks and 450 combat soldiers.A Mistral-class helicopter carrier in the Black Sea Fleet would provide
Russia with unprecedented power projection capability in its greater
Black Sea region. Russia’s recent announcement that it has no plans to
deploy either of the helicopter carriers in the Black Sea may simply
constitute a temporary measure by Moscow to assuage French sensibilities
in order to ensure that France does not rescind the sale as a result
of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. Turkey cannot discount the likely
possibility that the Sevastapol will serve at the Black Sea Fleet base
after which it was named.Russia’s reassertion of naval power in the Black Sea has already been
accompanied by Moscow’s first action to change the status quo in
relation to Black Sea energy exploitation. With the formal annexation
of Crimea, Ukraine’s Black Sea Oil and Gas company, ChronomorNaftohaz,
was made into a whole-owned subsidiary of the Russian state-controlled
joint-stock company Gazprom. Between the acquisition of
ChronomorNaftohaz itself and Gazprom’s now exclusive license for all
offshore energy development in Crimea’s continental shelf, the Russian
energy giant has acquired an estimated $50 billion in capital assets.Turkey’s national oil and gas company TPAO has itself spent $2.5
billion on offshore energy exploration in Turkey’s continental shelf.
Current estimates predict Turkey’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the
Black Sea contains 10 billion barrels of crude oil and two trillion
cubic meters of natural gas. However as ultra deep-water wells are
drilled in the region, more hydrocarbon resources may be discovered.
Even if Russia, whose continental shelf now projects from Crimea and
therefore closer to Turkey, does not attempt to dispute the demarcation
of Turkey’s EEZ, Turkey’s drilling platforms can no longer be defended
as easily from Russian warships.Of greater concern for Ankara is the more likely possibility that
Russia may use Turkey’s window of vulnerability to alter the status quo
in relation to the transport of natural gas through Russia’s “South
Stream” gas pipeline. The Russia-to-Bulgaria pipeline had been routed
through Turkey’s territorial waters to avoid the Ukraine’s EEZ.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea renders this longer and more expensive
route unnecessary and may lead Moscow to abrogate this very lucrative
agreement for Turkey.Moreover, Moscow may seek to affect the development of the
Trans-Anatolian Pipeline intended to transport Azerbaijani natural gas
to Europe via Georgia and Turkey. To prevent the breaking of its
stranglehold over gas exports to Europe, Russia may resume its
simmering conflict with Georgia or even expand the use of military
pressure to Azerbaijan. Ankara would have fewer options to block such
an exercise of Russian power, as Turkey is now in a weaker relative
position than during the time of the 2008 Russo-Georgian war.Conclusions: The politically motivated stoppage of the MILGEM’s production schedule
has created a window of vulnerability in Turkey’s Black Sea naval
defenses in the face of rapidly rising Russian naval power. The delayed
production of the Ada-class anti-submarine corvettes will put Turkey at
a disadvantage relative to Russia’s imminent deployment of a new fleet
of Black Sea submarines. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet will also possess
six Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates capable of countering supersonic
anti-ship missiles while Turkey will lack the comparable capability
because of the setback to MILGEM’s four TF 100 frigates.Until Turkey can build and deploy these naval assets, Ankara’s
deterrent capability has eroded and Russia will dominate the Black Sea.
Exercising sea control, Moscow can more easily deploy its newly
acquired Mistral-class helicopter carrier to stage amphibious assault
operations against other Black Sea littoral states including Georgia
and Azerbaijan.Having taken control of Ukraine’s offshore oil and natural gas
operations, Moscow will likely attempt to alter regional energy
transport arrangements in Russia’s favor while Rusia still enjoys naval
dominance. With Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, Russia no longer needs
to route its “South Stream” gas pipeline through Turkish waters to
avoid Ukraine’s EEZ

Moscow may attempt to cancel its agreement with
Ankara and reroute the pipeline through Crimea’s continental shelf,
resulting in a considerable revenue loss for Turkey. Until Ankara can rectify the gap in naval capabilities created by
MILGEM’s delays, Turkey will not be able to defend its national
interests adequately as Russia attempts to reestablish its sphere of
influence in the greater Black Sea region.

The author is a Fellow at the Shalem College, Jerusalem, and at the
Middle East and Asia Units of the Truman Research Institute for the
Advancement of Peace at Hebrew University. Dr. Tanchum teaches in the
Departments of Middle Eastern History and East Asian Studies of Tel Aviv
University.

American leaders have responded to Moscow's
annexation of Crimea by beefing up NATO allies in Russia's vicinity, and
rightly so. But it's imperative that Washington also pay attention to
the security of the South Caucasus corridor through Georgia and
Azerbaijan, which is crucial both for reverse transit from Afghanistan
and Western access to the heart of Eurasia.

Though
separated by the Black Sea, the fate of Ukraine and the countries of
the South Caucasus is intimately connected: They are both central to
Vladimir Putin's dream of a "Eurasian" empire, stretching fromBelarus to
Tajikistan. Without Slavic Ukraine, there can be no real Eurasian
union. Without control over the South Caucasus corridor, Russia can't
secure the Caspian Sea and Central Asia.

The
East-West corridor connecting Europe with the heart of Eurasia has been
an important and bipartisan success of U.S. foreign policy. From the
early 1990s, America supported the sovereignty and independence of the
former Soviet republics, while helping develop the oil and gas wealth of
the Caspian littoral. Washington played the central role in ensuring
that Europe became the first major export destination of Caspian oil.

Then
the 9/11 attacks showed the importance of this corridor for America's
own national security. The willingness of post-Soviet states to assist
in the war on terror was directly proportional to their level of
independence from Moscow. And with Iran out of the question and Russia
imposing many conditions and caveats, the airspace of Georgia and
Azerbaijan became the only reliable air corridor connecting NATO
territory with Afghanistan. Similarly, the land bridge across Georgia
and Azerbaijan carries about a third of the logistics for the
Afghanistan operation.

In the past five years, however,
President Barack Obama's "reset" policy prioritized relations with
Moscow at the expense of these smaller states. For the leaders of
post-Soviet states, American disengagement from their security affairs
was paralleled by growing Russian pressure to abandon their pro-Western
foreign policies.

As U.S.-Russian
relations deteriorate over Ukraine, the fallout won't be limited to
Ukraine. The South Caucasus is a most likely area for Moscow to create
further mayhem. Mr. Putin understands the strategic value of the South
Caucasus corridor more than most Western planners. Hence the 2008
invasion of Georgia, which as even former Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev
has acknowledged was aimed at stopping NATO expansion. "If the
war against Georgia had not happened," Mr. Medvedev said in 2011,
"several countries would join NATO."

Over
the past few years, Russia has cooperated with the U.S. by opening the
northern-distribution network to supply the operation in Afghanistan
across Russian territory. Wisely, however, the U.S. ensured part of the
network went through the South Caucasus instead of Russia. Moscow could
easily threaten to shut down its portion of the network, leaving the
Pentagon with two options: going south through Pakistan or west across
the Caucasus. In other words: If Moscow were to block access through the
South Caucasus, Washington could find itself at the mercy of Islamabad.

Moscow has already consolidated its
control over Armenia. Yerevan, like Tbilisi, had negotiated an
association agreement with the European Union
in July 2013. Yet Mr. Putin two months later bullied Yerevan to join
his own custom union instead. And in both Georgia and Azerbaijan, Mr.
Putin is investing in pro-Russian constituencies among opposition
politicians, civil-society groups and ethnic minorities. Leaders in both
Azerbaijan and Georgia have been left unimpressed by the Western
reaction to the Crimea crisis. Both wonder when and where the risks of
their pro-Western foreign policies outweigh the benefits.

Using
its huge military presence in Armenia, Moscow could stir trouble with
Azerbaijan, given the festering conflict between those two countries
over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. And Georgia lies between Russia and
Russia's Armenian bases. As Tbilisi plans to sign its own association
agreement with the EU this summer, Russian pressure is bound to
intensify. What if Moscow demanded a military corridor across Georgia to
its bases in Armenia? If the fractious and untested Georgian government
felt no American backing, it's an open question how Tbilisi would
respond.

Such a development would have
serious implications for America. If only one of the two gives in,
Moscow would gain control over the reverse transit route from
Afghanistan. And in the longer term, such a scenario would mean the loss
of Washington's access to Central Asia. With that, any hopes of Caspian
energy resources helping to diversify the EU's energy security could
come to naught.

None of this needs to
happen. To prevent such an outcome, the Obama administration must
reassure its allies in Tbilisi and Baku. First,
U.S. leaders must make clear that the "reset" no longer applies:
America's engagement in the region will no longer be indexed to Moscow's
reactions. High-level visits of American diplomats and military leaders
are needed to signal that Washington takes the security of the region
seriously; bilateral security and defense ties must be deepened.

Mr.
Obama should consider officially pronouncing his support for Georgia to
receive a membership-action plan at the upcoming NATO summit;
Azerbaijan doesn't ask for one, but Washington should consult with Baku
on steps to deepen NATO cooperation, as well as enhance America's role
in negotiations over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Deploying American
military facilities and personnel—if only for logistical purposes—in
either or both countries would also send the right message to Moscow. The
South Caucasus could serve as a powerful bulwark against the Russian
imperialist tide—but only if the U.S. recommits itself to the region's
security. Mr. Cornell is director
of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies and a co-founder of the Institute for
Security and Development Policy in Stockholm.

The fundamental
problem that Ukraine poses for Russia, beyond a long-term geographical
threat, is a crisis in internal legitimacy. Russian President Vladimir
Putin has spent his time in power rebuilding the authority of the
Russian state within Russia and the authority of Russia within the
former Soviet Union. The events in Ukraine undermine the second strategy
and potentially the first. If Putin cannot maintain at least Ukrainian
neutrality, then the world’s perception of him as a master strategist is
shattered, and the legitimacy and authority he has built for the
Russian state is, at best, shaken.

Whatever the origins
of the events in Ukraine, the United States is now engaged in a
confrontation with Russia. The Russians believe that the United States
was the prime mover behind regime change in Ukraine. At the very least,
the Russians intend to reverse events in Ukraine. At most, the Russians
have reached the conclusion that the United States intends to undermine
Russia’s power. They will resist. The United States has the option of
declining confrontation, engaging in meaningless sanctions against
individuals and allowing events to take their course. Alternatively, the
United States can choose to engage and confront the Russians.

A failure to engage at
this point would cause countries around Russia’s periphery, from
Estonia to Azerbaijan, to conclude that with the United States withdrawn
and Europe fragmented, they must reach an accommodation with Russia.
This will expand Russian power and open the door to Russian influence
spreading on the European peninsula itself. The United States has fought
three wars (World War I, World War II and the Cold War) to prevent
hegemonic domination of the region. Failure to engage would be a
reversal of a century-old strategy.

The American dilemma
is how to address the strategic context in a global setting in which it
is less involved in the Middle East and is continuing to work toward a
“pivot to Asia.” Nor can the United States simply allow events to take
their course. The United States needs a strategy that is economical and
coherent militarily, politically and financially. It has two advantages.
Some of the countries on Russia’s periphery do not want to be dominated
by her. Russia, in spite of some strengths, is inherently weak and does
not require US exertion on the order of the two World Wars, the Cold
War or even the Middle East engagements of the past decade.

The Russian and US positions

Putin is now in a
position where, in order to retain with confidence his domestic
authority, he must act decisively to reverse the outcome. The problem is
there is no single decisive action that would reverse events.
Eventually, the inherent divisions in Ukraine might reverse events.
However, a direct invasion of eastern Ukraine would simply solidify
opposition to Russia in Kiev and trigger responses internationally that
he cannot predict. In the end, it would simply drive home that although
the Russians once held a dominant position in all of Ukraine, they now
hold it in less than half. In the long run, this option—like other
short-term options—would not solve the Russian conundrum.

Whatever Putin does in
Ukraine, he has two choices. One is simply to accept the reversal,
which I would argue that he cannot do. The second is to take action in
places where he might achieve rapid diplomatic and political victories
against the West—the Baltics, Moldova or the Caucasus—while encouraging
Ukraine’s government to collapse into gridlock and developing bilateral
relations along the Estonia-Azerbaijan line. This would prevent a US
strategy of containment—a strategy that worked during the Cold War and
one that the Europeans are incapable of implementing on their own. This
comes down to the Americans.

The United States has
been developing, almost by default, a strategy not of disengagement but
of indirect engagement. Between 1989 and 2008, the US strategy has been
the use of US troops as the default for dealing with foreign issues.
From Panama to Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States
followed a policy of direct and early involvement of US military forces.
However, this was not the US strategy from 1914 to 1989. Then, the
strategy was to provide political support to allies, followed by
economic and military aid, followed by advisers and limited forces, and
in some cases pre-positioned forces. The United States kept its main
force in reserve for circumstances in which (as in 1917 and 1942 and, to
a lesser degree, in Korea and Vietnam) allies could not contain the
potential hegemon. Main force was the last resort.

This was primarily a
strategy of maintaining the balance of power. The containment of the
Soviet Union involved creating an alliance system comprising countries
at risk of Soviet attack. Containment was a balance-of-power strategy
that did not seek the capitulation of the Soviet Union as much as
increasing the risks of offensive action using allied countries as the
first barrier. The threat of full US intervention, potentially including
nuclear weapons, coupled with the alliance structure, constrained
Soviet risk-taking.

Because the current
Russian Federation is much weaker than the Soviet Union was at its
height and because the general geographic principle in the region
remains the same, a somewhat analogous balance of power strategy is
likely to emerge after the events in Ukraine. Similar to the containment
policy of 1945 to 1989, again in principle if not in detail, it would
combine economy of force and finance, and limit the development of
Russia as a hegemonic power while exposing the United States to limited
and controlled risk.

The coalescence of
this strategy is a development I forecast in two books, The Next Decade
and The Next 100 Years, as a concept I called the Intermarium. The
Intermarium was a plan pursued after World War I by Polish leader Jozef
Pilsudski for a federation, under Poland’s aegis, of Central and Eastern
European countries. What is now emerging is not the Intermarium, but it
is close. And it is now transforming from an abstract forecast to a
concrete, if still emergent, reality.

Forces leading to the alliance’s emergence

A Direct military
intervention by the United States in Ukraine is not possible. First,
Ukraine is a large country, and the force required to protect it would
outstrip US capabilities. Second, supplying such a force would require a
logistics system that does not exist and would take a long time to
build. Finally, such an intervention would be inconceivable without a
strong alliance system extending to the West and around the Black Sea.
The United States can supply economic and political support, but Ukraine
cannot counterbalance Russia and the United States cannot escalate to
the point of using its own forces. Ukraine is a battleground on which
Russian forces would have an advantage and a US defeat would be
possible.

If the United States
chooses to confront Russia with a military component, it must be on a
stable perimeter and on as broad a front as possible to extend Russian
resources and decrease the probability of Russian attack at any one
point out of fear of retaliation elsewhere. The ideal mechanism for such
a strategy would be Nato, which contains almost all of the critical
countries save Azerbaijan and Georgia. The problem is that Nato is not a
functional alliance. It was designed to fight the Cold War on a line
far to the west of the current line. More important, there was unity on
the principle that the Soviet Union represented an existential threat to
Western Europe.

That consensus is no
longer there. Different countries have different perceptions of Russia
and different concerns. For many, a replay of the Cold War, even in the
face of Russian actions in Ukraine, is worse than accommodation. In
addition, the end of the Cold War has led to a massive drawdown of
forces in Europe. Nato simply lacks the force unless there is a massive
and sudden buildup. That will not occur because of the financial crisis,
among other reasons. Nato requires unanimity to act, and that unanimity
is not there.

The countries that
were at risk from 1945 to 1989 are not the same as those at risk today.
Many of these countries were part of the Soviet Union then, and the rest
were Soviet satellites. The old alliance system was not built for this
confrontation. The Estonia-Azerbaijan line has as its primary interest
retaining sovereignty in the face of Russian power. The rest of Europe
is not in jeopardy, and these countries are not prepared to commit
financial and military efforts to a problem they believe can be managed
with little risk to them. Therefore, any American strategy must bypass
Nato or, at the very least, create new structures to organize the
region.

Characteristics of the alliance

Each of the various
countries involved is unique and has to be addressed that way. But these
countries share the common danger that events in Ukraine could spread
and directly affect their national security interests, including
internal stability. As I observed, the Baltics, Moldova and the Caucasus
are areas where the Russians could seek to compensate for their defeat.
Because of this, and also because of their intrinsic importance,
Poland, Romania and Azerbaijan must be the posts around which this
alliance is built.

The Baltic salient,
145 kilometers from Saint Petersburg in Estonia, would be a target for
Russian destabilization. Poland borders the Baltics and is the leading
figure in the Visegrad battlegroup, an organization within the European
Union. Poland is eager for a closer military relationship with the
United States, as its national strategy has long been based on
third-power guarantees against aggressors. The Poles cannot defend
themselves and the Baltics, given the combat capabilities necessary for
the task.

The Dniester River is
80 kilometers from Odessa, the main port on the Black Sea for Ukraine
and an important one for Russia. The Prut River is about 200 kilometers
from Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Moldova is between these two
rivers. It is a battleground region, at least of competing political
factions. Romania must be armed and supported in protecting Moldova and
in organizing southeastern Europe. In Western hands, Moldova threatens
Odessa, Ukraine’s major port also used by Russia on the Black Sea. In
Russian hands, Moldova threatens Bucharest.

At the far end of the
alliance structure I am envisioning is Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea
bordering Russia and Iran. Should Dagestan and Chechnya destabilize,
Azerbaijan—which is Islamic and majority Shiite but secular—would become
critical for limiting the regional spread of jihadists. Azerbaijan also
would support the alliance’s position in the Black Sea by supporting
Georgia and would serve as a bridge for relations (and energy) should
Western relations with Iran continue to improve. To the southwest, the
very pro-Russian Armenia—which has a Russian troop presence and a
long-term treaty with Moscow—could escalate tensions with Azerbaijan in
Nagorno-Karabakh. Previously, this was not a pressing issue for the
United States. Now it is. The security of Georgia and its ports on the
Black Sea requires Azerbaijan’s inclusion in the alliance.

Azerbaijan serves a
more strategic purpose. Most of the countries in the alliance are heavy
importers of Russian energy; for instance, 91 percent of Poland’s energy
imports and 86 percent of Hungary’s come from Russia. There is no
short-term solution to this problem, but Russia needs the revenue from
these exports as much as these countries need the energy. Developing
European shale and importing US energy is a long-term solution. A
medium-term solution, depending on pipeline developments that Russia has
tended to block in the past, is sending natural gas from Azerbaijan to
Europe. Until now, this has been a commercial issue, but it has become a
strategically critical issue. The Caspian region, of which Azerbaijan
is the lynchpin, is the only major alternative to Russia for energy.
Therefore, rapid expansion of pipelines to the heart of Europe is as
essential as providing Azerbaijan with the military capability to defend
itself (a capability it is prepared to pay for and, unlike other allied
countries, does not need to be underwritten).

The key to the
pipeline will be Turkey’s willingness to permit transit. I have not
included Turkey as a member of this alliance. Its internal politics,
complex relations and heavy energy dependence on Russia make such
participation difficult. I view Turkey in this alliance structure as
France in the Cold War. It was aligned yet independent, militarily
self-sufficient yet dependent on the effective functioning of others.
Turkey, inside or outside of the formal structure, will play this role
because the future of the Black Sea, the Caucasus and southeastern
Europe is essential to Ankara.

These countries,
diverse as they are, share a desire not to be dominated by the Russians.
That commonality is a basis for forging them into a functional military
alliance. This is not an offensive force but a force designed to deter
Russian expansion. All of these countries need modern military
equipment, particularly air defense, anti-tank and mobile infantry. In
each case, the willingness of the United States to supply these weapons,
for cash or credit as the situation requires, will strengthen pro-US
political forces in each country and create a wall behind which Western
investment can take place. And it is an organization that others can
join, which unlike Nato does not allow each member the right to veto.

The practicality of the US strategy

There are those who
would criticize this alliance for including members who do not share all
the democratic values of the US State Department. This may be true. It
is also true that during the Cold War the United States was allied with
the Shah’s Iran, Turkey and Greece under dictatorship and Mao’s China
after 1971. Having encouraged Ukrainian independence, the United
States—in trying to protect that independence and the independence of
other countries in the region—is creating an alliance structure that
will include countries, such as Azerbaijan, that have been criticized.
However, if energy does not come from Azerbaijan, it will come from
Russia, and then the Ukrainian events will dissolve into tragic farce.
The State Department must grapple with the harsh forces its own policies
have unleashed. This suggests that the high-mindedness borne of benign
assumptions now proven to be illusions must make way for realpolitik
calculations.

The balance-of-power
strategy allows the United States to use the natural inclination of
allies to bolster its own position and take various steps, of which
military intervention is the last, not the first. It recognizes that the
United States, as nearly 25 percent of the world’s economy and the
global maritime hegemon, cannot evade involvement. Its very size and
existence involves it. Nor can the United States confine itself to
gestures like sanctions on 20 people. This is not seen as a sign of
resolve as much as weakness. It does mean that as the United States
engages in issues like Ukraine and must make strategic decisions, there
are alternatives to intervention—such as alliances. In this case, a
natural alliance structure presents itself—a descendant of Nato but
shaped for this crisis, much like the alliance I forecast previously.

In my view, Russian
power is limited and has flourished while the United States was
distracted by its wars in the Middle East and while Europe struggled
with its economic crisis. That does not mean Russia is not dangerous. It
has short-term advantages, and its insecurity means that it will take
risks. Weak and insecure states with temporary advantages are dangerous.
The United States has an interest in acting early because early action
is cheaper than acting in the last extremity. This is a case of anti-air
missiles, attack helicopters, communications systems and training,
among other things. These are things the United States has in abundance.
It is not a case of deploying divisions, of which it has few. The
Poles, Romanians, Azerbaijanis and certainly the Turks can defend
themselves. They need weapons and training, and that will keep Russia
contained within its caldron as it plays out a last hand as a great
power.

US and European sanctions against
Russia are designed to “punish” its actions in Crimea. However, instead
of forcing Russia into economic and political submission, the sanctions
will spur the country to greater political and economic independence.

Since the end of the Soviet Union, Russia’s economic progress and
development has been directly dependent on political and economic
institutions dominated by the West. From Russia’s integration
into the World Trade Organization, to Russian dependence on
Western banking and finance, Moscow has come to rely on precisely
those institutions now being used against it. Naturally, any
Russian countermeasures against the sanctions will aim to
disentangle it from this US-, Anglo- and Euro-centric
architecture, forcing Moscow to look elsewhere for its economic
future. This need to find alternative modes of development and
prosperity will contribute greatly toward the continuing shift to
a multi-polar world.

Considering the vast sums of money and future investment at
stake, it seems unlikely that there will be a monumental shift in
the financial arrangement between Russia and the West, the
current crisis notwithstanding. However, the recent actions taken
by the US and its European partners underscore the need for
Russia to consider viable alternatives to dependence on the West.
This dependence takes many forms, from access to financing to
revenue from energy exports – Russia heavily relies on Western
capital to finance its budget and economic development.

The sanctions imposed by the West have not only targeted
individuals determined to be in President Putin’s “inner
circle,” but also major Russian banks (Bank Rossiya,
Sobinbank, and SMP Bank). As a result, VISA and MasterCard
stopped offering card services through these banks, and later
resumed services only to the SMP Bank, creating difficulties for
many Russian citizens, as well as the institutions themselves. In
response to these and other measures, Bank Rossiya has stopped
conducting business in foreign currencies and has begun a shift
to ruble-only operations. While this may create added
difficulties for the bank in the short-term, it does signal a
critical trend – a shift away from the US dollar and euro,
towards the ruble (and possibly yuan) as a debt settlement
currency. Such a move would have very significant long-term
implications, including opening the door to a host of other
developments.

Russia’s alternatives

First and foremost is the issue of energy revenue. While Europe
may be ramping up the rhetoric against Russia, the fact remains
that it is dependent on Russia for more than one third of its
total gas imports. Any significant sanctions would jeopardize
everything from Germany’s manufacturing base to France’s
chemicals and aircraft exports. With this in mind, no one in
Europe can seriously believe that punitive actions against Russia
won’t have a deleterious effect on an already fragile EU economy.
Surely Moscow understands this, which is why Putin and Co. don’t
seem terribly intimidated by the bluster from Brussels and
Berlin. However, should Russia decide to put the screws on
Europe, it has the proverbial “ace in the hole” in
China.

For decades, one of the world’s most intriguing and undoubtedly
lucrative development projects has been the possibility of a
Sino-Russian energy pipeline. Hampered by everything from
Soviet-era political animosity to disagreements over pricing and
construction subsidies, the project has never successfully gotten
off the ground. However, this has begun to change in recent
years. Although Russia’s Gazprom failed to secure a pricing deal with its Chinese partners in
January, it seems that the two are inching closer to the deal,
which will set in motion a development project that could have
far-reaching ramifications for the two countries, and arguably
for the world. Once the pipeline is finally in place (how long
that will take is still unclear), it will give Russia tremendous
leverage over Europe in all areas of cooperation and negotiation.
Moreover, it will allow Moscow to expand its influence in other
areas, free of the constraints of having to mollify Western
“partners.”

Aside from energy cooperation with China, Russia has another
important industry where it will continue to grow and flex its
muscles: weapons exports. Russia, accounting for 27 percent of
global arms exports in 2013, is second only to the US which
accounts for 29 percent of global arms trade. In fact, Russia has
announced recently that it is looking to expand its influence in
this crucial industry, particularly in the traditional US sphere
of influence, Latin America.

Alexander Fomin, the head of the Federal Service for
Military-Technical Cooperation, recently explained at a defense exhibition in
Chile that Russia is looking to expand its exports in South
America, including traditional weapons and military aircraft. He
added that “We are offering our Chilean partners a
localization of production in their country, which is certainly a
very beneficial aspect of our proposed contracts.” Taking a
page out of China’s playbook, it seems Russia is expanding its
influence in this key area of development by dangling the carrots
of job creation and local manufacturing, rather than simply
exports.

Additionally, Russia has outstanding contracts with Syria and
Iran for delivery of all-important S-300 missile defense systems.
Russia has, to this point, delayed the delivery of the systems to
these countries out of political considerations to the US and
Europe. As Russia was a key participant in the Iranian nuclear
negotiations, as well as in the diplomatic efforts to resolve the
war in Syria, Moscow has been wary of delivering on its
contracts. However, given the belligerence of the US and Europe,
it seems quite reasonable that Russia might rethink this
strategy, adding an additional layer of defense for countries
long since on America’s target list.

From the financial perspective, Russia has a great deal of
leverage vis-à-vis its energy exports. Specifically, Russia could
quite easily upset the entire Western economy by unilaterally
refusing to accept US dollars as payment for its energy. Were
Russia to demand payment in gold or some other currency, the
entire petrodollar economy could come crashing down. It would
force China to take countermeasures against rapid dollar
devaluation, which would only exacerbate the problem. The Euro,
itself being very closely tied to the dollar, would undoubtedly
also come crashing down. To be sure, such a strategy would be
dangerous to Russia’s own economy, but it could be seen as a
possible weapon of last resort, should Washington decide to
ratchet up the sanctions.

Many have speculated that Russia has already taken some of the
initial steps toward exiting from the dollar. In early 2014, a
“foreign government” dumped nearly $118 billion. Many experts believe that these
deals have been quietly executed by Russia, and would constitute
a stark warning to the US of Russia’s considerable influence in
terms of its dollar holdings. Should Russian moves in turn make
China nervous, then these actions would also have very dire
consequences for the world’s reserve currency.

The geopolitical impact

Aside from economic concerns, the sanctions could in many ways
threaten Western geopolitical hegemony. Such countermeasures
would force Russia to work more diligently and with greater
urgency toward cooperation within regional and strategic
groupings, such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO).

(From
L) Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, India's Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh, Russia's President Vladimir Putin, China's President Xi Jinping
and South African President Jacob Zuma pose for a photo after the BRICS
leader's meeting at the G20 summit on September 5, 2013 in Saint
Petersburg. (AFP Photo / Sergei Karpukhin)

In 2013, BRICS members agreed in principle to establish a BRICS Development Bank,
a financial institution that would act as an alternative to the
US and EU dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World
Bank. Although the particulars of getting such an institution up
and running are quite complex, the idea is certainly possible and
could change the geopolitical and economic landscape of much of
the world. Were these obstacles overcome, much of the Global
South would be able to look to the BRICS Development Bank as a
means of securing much needed investment capital, without the
usual austerity, structural adjustments, and other
conditionalities attached to IMF and World Bank funds. Moreover,
it would provide sound economic footing upon which the developing
countries of the grouping could withstand continued economic
instability emanating from the US, Europe, and Japan.

In addition to BRICS, the SCO offers the possibility of a
geopolitical counterweight to US-NATO hegemony. If the sanctions
against Russia had the side effect of pushing Moscow and Beijing
closer, undoubtedly expanded SCO cooperation would result. Not
only is the grouping an economic forum within which Russia,
China, former Soviet republics, and soon India, Pakistan, and
possibly other nations, can come together to tackle security
concerns, but economic cooperation has also become an important
aspect of the SCO. This development would ultimately weaken
US-NATO power, moving the world toward a multi-polar future.

Of course, all of these countermeasures do not change the fact
that any significant sanctions would hurt Russia in the short
term. With an economy that is still so heavily reliant upon
energy revenue and weapons exports, Russia has a long way to go
towards true economic self-reliance and diversity. In order to
significantly diversify, Russia will require cooperation, not
aggression from the US and its Western partners. However, given
recent developments, this may be more of a utopian vision than a
political reality.

Regardless of US and European policy, however, Russia is by no
means powerless. On the contrary, the Ukraine crisis has shown
the world that, less than twenty-five years after the end of the
Soviet Union, Russia is once again a major world power.

We suspect these sanctions would have more teeth than some travel bans, but, as we noted previously,
it is just as likely to be another epic geopolitical debacle resulting
from what was originally intended to be a demonstration of strength and
instead is rapidly turning out into a terminal confirmation of weakness.

As we explained earlier in the week,
Russia seems perfectly happy to telegraph that it is just as willing to
use barter (and “heaven forbid” gold) and shortly other “regional”
currencies, as it is to use the US Dollar, hardly the intended
outcome of the western blockade, which appears to have just backfired
and further impacted the untouchable status of the Petrodollar. …

“If
Washington can’t stop this deal, it could serve as a signal to other
countries that the United States won’t risk major diplomatic disputes at
the expense of the sanctions regime,”

The US dollar’s position as the base currency for global
energy trading gives the US a number of unfair advantages. It seems that
Moscow is ready to take those advantages away. (4)

The existence of
“petrodollars” is one of the pillars of America’s economic might because
it creates a significant external demand for American currency,
allowing the US to accumulate enormous debts without defaulting.
If a Japanese buyer want to buy a barrel of Saudi oil, he has to pay in
dollars even if no American oil company ever touches the said barrel.
Dollar has held a dominant position in global trading for such a long
time that even Gazprom’s natural gas contracts for Europe are priced and
paid for in US dollars. Until recently, a significant part of EU-China
trade had been priced in dollars.

Lately, China has led the BRICS efforts to dislodge the dollar
from its position as the main global currency, but the “sanctions war”
between Washington and Moscow gave an impetus to the long-awaited scheme
to launch the petroruble and switch all Russian energy exports away
from the US currency .

The
main supporters of this plan are Sergey Glaziev, the economic aide of
the Russian President and Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, the
biggest Russian oil company and a close ally of Vladimir Putin. Both
have been very vocal in their quest to replace the dollar with the
Russian ruble. Now, several top Russian officials are pushing the plan
forward.

First, it was the Minister of Economy, Alexei Ulyukaev who told
Russia 24 news channel that the Russian energy companies must should
ditch the dollar. “ They must be braver in signing contracts in rubles and the currencies of partner-countries, ” he said.

Then, on March 2, Andrei Kostin, the CEO of state-owned VTB bank,
told the press that Gazprom, Rosneft and Rosoboronexport, state company
specialized in weapon exports, can start trading in rubles. “
I’ve spoken to Gazprom, to Rosneft and Rosoboronexport management and
they don’t mind switching their exports to rubles. They only need a
mechanism to do that ”, Kostin told the attendees of the annual Russian Bank Association meeting.

Judging by the statement made at the same meeting by Valentina
Matviyenko, the speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, it is
safe to assume that no resources will be spared to create such a
mechanism. “ Some ‘hot headed’ decision-makers have already forgotten
that the global economic crisis of 2008 – which is still taking its toll
on the world – started with a collapse of certain credit institutions
in the US, Great Britain and other countries. This is why we believe
that any hostile financial actions are a double-edged sword and even the
slightest error will send the boomerang back to the aborigines,” she
said.

It seems that Moscow has decided who will be in charge of the “boomerang”. Igor
Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, has been nominated to chair the board of
directors of Saint-Petersburg Commodity Exchange, a specialized
commodity exchange. In October 2013, speaking at the World Energy
Congress in Korea, Sechin called for a “global mechanism to trade
natural gas” and went on suggesting that “ it was advisable to
create an international exchange for the participating countries, where
transactions could be registered with the use of regional currencies “.
Now, one of the most influential leaders of the global energy trading
community has the perfect instrument to make this plan a reality. A
Russian commodity exchange where reference prices for Russian oil and
natural gas will be set in rubles instead of dollars will be a strong
blow to the petrodollar.

Rosneft
has recently signed a series of big contracts for oil exports to China
and is close to signing a “jumbo deal” with Indian companies.
In both deals, there are no US dollars involved. Reuters reports, that
Russia is close to entering a goods-for-oil swap transaction with Iran
that will give Rosneft around 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil per day to
sell in the global market. The White House and the russophobes in the
Senate are livid and are trying to block the transaction because it
opens up some very serious and nasty scenarios for the petrodollar. If
Sechin decides to sell this Iranian oil for rubles, through a Russian
exchange, such move will boost the chances of the “petroruble” and will
hurt the petrodollar.

It can be said that the US sanctions have opened a Pandora’s box of troubles for the American currency. The
Russian retaliation will surely be unpleasant for Washington, but what
happens if other oil producers and consumers decide to follow the
example set by Russia? During the last month, China opened two
centers to process yuan-denominated trade flows, one in London and one
in Frankfurt. Are the Chinese preparing a similar move against the
greenback? We’ll soon find out.

In early March, the Russian Federation, after staging a referendum under Kalashnikovs in Crimea, proceeded to annex the region and laid the groundwork -- according to Moscow -- for "new political-legal realities," that is to say, a new Russian paradigm for a lawless world. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her speech to the Bundestag on March 13, Russia is bringing the law of the jungle to the table. For those of us who have lived through Vladimir Putin's attempts to reverse the results of what he calls "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century -- the dissolution of the Soviet Union -- what is happening in Ukraine is not unexpected. Nor does it mark the last act of the drama.

It should be abundantly clear now that Putin's initial plan of taking eastern Ukraine by mobilizing the Russian population there has failed. But that doesn't mean he's giving up. Russian strategists are talking about a "weekend of rage" that could involve some kind of armed siege of government buildings in southern and eastern Ukraine. If these local provocateurs and "self-defense forces" manage to hold these buildings as they did in Crimea, it might serve as a basis for further military intervention. Not that we should be surprised by this cynical playbook any more.

History can be a useful guide for politicians: first, to help prevent new disasters, and second, to help react to disasters that inevitably happen anyway, despite the best laid plans. And yet, plenty of politicians are making the same mistakes they should have learned from decades ago. These days, I can't help but be reminded of Yogi Berra's famous quote, "It's déjà vu, all over again."

In Chechnya, tens of thousands of people were killed just to make Putin president and consolidate his power. Then, when the Colored Revolutions -- and their successful reforms -- became a menace to his rule, he invaded Georgia in order to kill this contagious model and again reconfirm his power. Now, as before, faced with eroding popularity in Russia, a shale gas revolution in North America, and the need for consistent port access to equip his allies in the Middle East, Putin attacked Ukraine and seized Crimea.

And yet, even with these myriad examples, the West continues to misunderstand or excuse Putin's aggression. These days, many pundits are busy with soul-searching, with one of the constant refrains being how the West overreached with NATO and EU expansion, and how it needlessly provoked the Russian bear. The conclusion they come to is that part of the reason for Russia's behavior, however petulant, lies in Western activism. It's a particular kind of intellectual self-flagellation and, for Putin, a reflection of Western weakness that only emboldens him.

Neville Chamberlain, when presenting the case for the great European powers to acquiesce to Hitler's occupation of the Sudetenland, argued that Europeans should not care about a "quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing." I hear a lot of pundits now talking about the "asymmetry of interests," implying that Russia is entitled to annex neighboring countries' lands for the simple reason that it cares for these lands more than the West. Others opine that we should all get used to the idea that the Crimea is gone, and that Russia will never give it back. This is exactly what I was told in the summer of 2008 -- that I should be resigned to the idea that a part of Georgian territory, then occupied by Russia, was gone for good.

But this logic has its continuation. As we know from history, the cycles of appeasement usually get shorter with geometric progression. Soon, the same pundits may declare -- with their best poker faces on -- that now Moldova is "lost," or Latvia "lost," even some province of Poland. And just because Russia is not in the mood to give it back.

The biggest casualty for the West will not be the countries which already are, or strive to be, Western allies, but rather the principles on which the Western world is built.

The biggest casualty for the West will not be the countries which already are, or strive to be, Western allies, but rather the principles on which the Western world is built. The truth is that Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova are being punished by Russia for their desire to live in a free and democratic society -- one very different from the Putin model.

Certainly, Moscow didn't seem to care much about the minority Russian populations in its near abroad -- so long as they were comfortably ruled by corrupt cronies of the Kremlin. But over the ensuing decade, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova have learned to look to the West, not so much because of geopolitical priorities, but because people there aspire to a Western way of life that respects human rights and universal values. For this reason, the West must shelter these countries not just out of pragmatic calculations, but for the very principles that turned the Western democracies into the most successful societies in history.

The basic facts are very clear. Russia presents the greatest challenge to international law and order since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. And even though the West has much greater superiority over Russia -- both economically and militarily -- than it ever had over the Soviet Union, today's leaders are reluctant to take advantage of this asymmetry.

The problem, perhaps, is due to the ambivalence of most regional experts that guide Western leaders' thinking. Their fundamental misreading of Russia is based on the fact that they don't understand the difference between the Soviet nomenclatura and modern Russia's corrupt elite. They grossly underestimate the attachment of Russian elites to their mansions and bank accounts in the West. Likewise, Moscow's key decision-makers are way more dependent financially and psychologically on the West than the bureaucrats of the Brezhnev era. Sanctions can successfully divide this group from Putin's inside circle, but they have to go further and exact greater pain.

And yet, despite President Barack Obama's rhetoric, the West -- particularly Europe -- appears reluctant to impose tougher sanctions. Unlike during the Cold War, Western companies draw much more benefit from Russia today, and thus they too will have to pay the price of sanctions. But after the first round of sanctions, stocks rebounded as markets were relieved that the measures didn't seem far-reaching. So how does the West expect to be taken seriously by Putin when even Wall Street isn't buying the seriousness of the Western alliance's intentions? The dilemma is simple: Is the West willing to pay this price now, or delay the decision and pay a much higher price in the future?

The choice can best be described in medical terms. The cancer of Russian aggression first showed up in Georgia, but the West decided to neglect the diagnosis and preferred to treat the illness with aspirin. Crimea is the metastasis of what happened in Georgia, and yet the West is still excluding the surgical option -- that is to say military intervention -- as carrying too high a risk. But at least it should apply chemotherapy. Yes, this means that the West will feel the effects of its own drugs, and particularly European companies in the short term. But in the long term, this painful dose is the only way to help kill the cancer that is Putin.

Winston Churchill once prophetically told Hitler's appeasers: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war." Surely, we cannot expect modern-day politicians obsessed with polls and midterm elections to be Churchillian all the time. But at a minimum they should not want to go down in history as the Neville Chamberlains of the 21st century. And misreading Putin for the man that he is -- and has always been -- is at the heart of appeasement.

A
United States surveillance drone
has been intercepted above the Ukranian region of Crimea, a Russian
state arms and technology group said Friday. "The
drone was flying at about 4,000 metres (12,000 feet) and was virtually
invisible from the ground. It was possible to break the link with US
operators with complex radio-electronic" technology, said Rostec in a
statement. The drone fell
"almost intact into the hands of self-defence forces" added Rostec,
which said it had manufactured the equipment used to down the aircraft,
but did not specify who was operating it. "Judging
by its identification number, UAV MQ-5B belonged to the 66th American
Reconnaissance Brigade, based in Bavaria," Rostec said on its website,
which also carried a picture of what it said was the captured drone. The
photograph appeared to show an apparently armed drone in flight, rather
than debris. The Crimean port of Sevastopol is home to Russia's Black
Sea Fleet, which is believed to be equipped with detection equipment.
Crimea,
where pro-Kremlin forces have control, is to hold a referendum on
Sunday on the peninsula joining Russia, in what Moscow says is a fair
expression of self identity but the West views as an illegal annexation
of sovereign territory.

The crisis in Ukraine was the largest battlefield of
cyber war since Russia’s cyber-attacks on Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in
2008. Simon Tsipis, cyber warfare researcher at the INSS think tank reports.

Russia has managed to hit almost all Ukraine
government websites and it was able to take control and to put on
surveillance and monitoring all the Internet and telephone
communications lines, before the invasion and occupation of Crimea by its military. Russian
Special Forces managed to derail all important communications systems
through direct physical impact on them by combined field and high-tech
operation.

Cyber espionage is an integral part of military strategy and foreign policy of Russia
towards the countries of the former Soviet Union. Being able to access
information systems of diplomatic, government and military organizations
for many years, since the USSR collapse, giving Russia a huge advantage
in predicting their tactics, actions and analyzing the thinking of
their neighbours.

The largest military cyber attack was the attack implemented by the Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) on the armed forces of Ukraine, as reported by BBC. According to the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine, Russian cyber attacks collapsed the communication systems of almost all Ukrainian forces that were based in Crimea
that could pose danger to the invading Russian troops. Attacks of a
lesser scale were directed at government websites, news and social
networks. Similar handwriting and set of actions has been committed by
the Russian military during the war against Georgia, a fact which
suggests that the invasion operation in the Crimea
has been carefully planned in advance. The Head of the Security Service
of Ukraine, Valentin Nalevaychenko admitted, that mobile communication
systems of members of the Ukrainian government were attacked in order to
neutralize and disrupt communication between government agencies. As
the Ukrainian company Ukrtelecom announced, unmarked gunmen penetrated
into their infrastructure objects and the optical fiber and conductor
units were knocked out, which in turn led to the collapse of all
communication. Despite this, western experts say that Russian forces
were relatively moderate in their actions and are able to engage much
more global cyber-attacks.

Being able to access
information systems of diplomatic, government and military organizations
for many years, since the USSR collapse, gave Russia a huge advantage
in predicting their tactics, actions and analyzing the thinking of their
neighbours

According to a former senior officer of
the CIA’s Special Operations department Marty Martin, the more extreme
attacks will be held by the Russians in case of greater escalation of
the conflict. “Sometimes it is useful to keep some lines of
communication working, in order to be able to monitor and control, than
completely derail them and deprive yourself from intelligence sources.”
says Martin. In fact, experts say, no one in the world so far, including
the CIA, is not able to assess the possibility of Russian
cyber-capabilities as large-scale conflict with its participation yet
haven’t been at place.

Additional obstacle to Western intelligence
agencies, in the definition of “friend or foe” and who on which side,
was the fact that both sides are communicating virtually on the same
language, writing scripts by the similar rules and often attack each
other with similar IP addresses.

A founder of U.S. cyber security
consulting company “Red Branch Consulting” Paul Rozenshveyg argues that
Russia is quite strong in cyber, but he warns that we should not
overestimate the cyber-space as a place of major future wars, in
comparison with ground operations, if the situation gets out of control.
“Cyber attacks will not bring much damage,” Paul said “when the tanks
will get on course.”

According to the director of the California
based privet cyber-security company “CrowdStrike” Dmitri Alperovitch,
there have been observed a great amount of cyber attacks and
surveillance activity in Ukraine cyberspace during the crisis. Dmitry
also said that despite the fact that both the Ukrainian and Russian
hackers came out of the same “schools”, the difference in the
capabilities of Russia and Ukraine is essential. Russia, he said, ranks
among world leaders for its cyber capabilities, while Ukraine “doesn’t
even come close to a third …”

Another expert in this field, the
director of the initiative group “Atlantic Council on the State of
Cyber-management” and former adviser on cyber-security issues of the
White House, for the Bush administration, Jason Harley, argues that
today we are witnessing a different approach to cyber warfare from the
Russian side, rather than in the conflicts in Georgia and Estonia.
Moscow, he says, applied in the Ukrainian case, higher level of
“hands-on” attacks. This is, an old school Cold War tactics. Physical
contact with cyber equipment in hostile territory is an old, and far not
ineffectual way, the Russian security services used to work in the
past. In the near future, we will see more large-scale operations by
such means, he added. In the case of Ukraine, there was absolutely no
difficulty for Russian special forces to penetrate any military or
strategic facility in Ukraine, since the equipment and facilities were
built by the same experts when the two countries were under one rule.
The Russian intelligence services are possessing all the required
documents and location maps of all the important objects in the
territory of the former Soviet Union, as well as specialists, some of
whom participated in the construction of these objects and are today
reside in Russia. Thus, says Harley, any kind of intervention or
sabotage in the former Soviet Union territories, can be quickly and
efficiently suppressed by Russian security services, which makes such
attempts almost meaningless. Today, all cyber-space mainly based on
remote attacks such as denial-of-service (DDoS), while if physical
penetration and chopping off or putting under control of telephone and
Internet communication is possible, remote attacks lose most of its
effect.

One of the techniques used by the Russians for cyber
espionage was the “Snake”, also known as Ouroboros and Uroburos. It was
developed in Russia at least four years ago, with some elements of
software created in 2005. Its name, Urobos has been taken from Greek
mythology and it is capable of inducing chaos in communication system,
and this is exactly what it did in Ukraine. What’s interesting about it
is the fact, that it is able to combine two in one. It is able to be
used as stealthy means for network surveillance and data collection, it
can also carry out a ‘warhead’ – able to physically destroy computer
networks specifically targeted by its operators. The use of Urobos,
along with the physical attacks against networks therefore combined both
“old school” operations with modern, cyber warfare techniques to gain
the desired impact.

While Russian cyber operations in Ukraine were
based on the experience and lessons learned from previous attacks on
Estonia and Georgia, they haven’t left ‘fingerprints’ leading to the
sources. Todays cyber wars are waged in a domain that lacks rules of
war, what could bring a country threatened by such all-out cyber
offensive to turn to physical retaliation, in the absence of effective
international legal and cyber security tools.

As for the Ukraine,
some details on the use of cyber-means in the country are now been
disclosed. The extents of the corruption of the Yanukovych’s government,
after his overthrow, are crawling out. It became known that in December
2013, when the confrontation on Independence square (the Maydan) were
gaining strength, Ukrainian hackers have posted online information about
some senior members of the government that appealed to them with
requests to crack Internet sites and other resources of the State
Government Organizations for personal means. Thus, on the night of
December 23 2013, all sites of Ukrainian government were hacked by the
cyber-activists. However, hackers have published the stolen information
in the public domain, admitting that they were forced to do so, as they
had not been paid for hacking the databases. Furthermore, according to
those hackers, First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine
and the former chairman of the State Customs Service of Ukraine Igor
Kalyetnik addressed them, requesting access to the Unified State
Register of Voters of Ukraine. He asked for “full control over more than
a hundred public mailboxes of government members. In addition, hackers
received a request to access the e-mail of the Chairman of the Verkhovna
Rada of Ukraine Volodymir Rybak and Minister of Internal Affairs of
Ukraine Vitaliy Zakharchenko.

It
is important, that in addition to mail-boxes, Kalyetnik wished to
establish control over personal mobile devices of the aforementioned
officials. According to cyber criminals, there is still a lot of
information at their disposal, and they intend to publish the data of
the Ministry of Finance, bank account numbers and other details of the
Treasury of Ukraine.

Cyber events during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

December 16,
2003: Ukrainian hackers group “KiberBerkut” direct an attack against
several NATO websites, their actions were attributed to the presence of
“the NATO occupiers” on Ukraine territory.

“March 7, 2014: Attacks
are directed against Russian news and media websites, the Ukrainian
hackers group “Kibersotnya” claimed to be responsible for the collapse
of the site “Russian newspaper”. Another cyber attack has undergone news
agency Lenta.ru, administration.

March 9, 2014: Indian government
confirms that a military documents concerning Indo-Russian negotiations
over fighter aircraft were compromised by unknown hackers. The
assumption is that someone, not necessarily Ukraine, trying to explore
the possibilities of Russian Air Forces, through hacking databases with
such information that are available in other country’s air-forces whose
systems are much less secure than the Russia’s.

March 14, 2014:
Russian armed forces were able to intercept and seize American
reconnaissance and strike UAV over Crimea. The drone, an Israeli built
MQ-5B ‘Hunter’, one of 18 operated by the US Army’s 66th Military
Intelligence Brigade. The unit regularly stationed in Bavaria, Germany
was transferred to Ukrainian Kirovograd in early March, from where the
UAVs performed reconnaissance raids over Ukraine, Crimea and the Russian
border regions.

March 14, 2014: Multiple Distributed Denial of
Service (DDoS) attacks, allegedly by Ukrainian hackers, are directed at
Russian government and commercial websites. Targets include the Mr.
Putin’s presidential website, the official government website and the
Central Bank of Russia, Portals of the Russian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and energy consortium Gazprom. As suggested by the FSB, all the
attacks committed by Ukrainian hackers or hackers hired by Ukrainian
opposition but, Russian law enforcement agencies also do not rule out
the fact that in those attacks may have been involved foreign
individuals or entities as well.

March 17, 2014: VTB and the Alpha
bank, two of the largest Russian banks, suffer major cyber attacks
damaging the on-line banking service and credit organization. An
anonymous Caucasus hacker group took responsibility for those attacks.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military and American
intelligence agencies have quietly pushed the White House in recent
weeks to deny a new Russian surveillance plane the right to fly over
U.S. territory. This week, the White House finally began consideration
of the decision whether to certify the new Russian aircraft under the
so-called “Open Skies Treaty.” And now the question becomes: Will the
spies and generals get their way?

As
the United States and Russia face off publicly over Ukraine, behind the
scenes, President Obama’s national security cabinet is having its own
quiet feud over a long-standing agreement to allow Russian surveillance
flights over U.S. airspace.

The spies and the generals want to deny the Russians the overflight
rights for its latest surveillance planes. The State Department, which
ultimately makes that decision, has favored such certification. On
Wednesday an interagency meeting of senior officials failed to reach
consensus, delaying the decision until Obama takes it up with the
National Security Council, according to U.S. officials involved in the
dispute.

At issue is the Open Skies Treaty. First signed in 1992
and finally ratified in 2002, the treaty adopted by 34 nations allows
the safe passage of planes equipped with advanced cameras and sensors
that give governments the imagery and data they use to assess everything
from compliance with arms control treaties to troop movements.

On
April 15, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, and the Republican chairman of
that panel’s subcommittee that oversees the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Rep.
Mike Rogers from Alabama, urged Obama to deny Russia the right to fly
its new planes over U.S. airspace.

In their letter, the two lawmakers write, “We agree with the concerns
expressed by the Intelligence Community and the military leadership of
the Department of Defense” in their opposition to certifying the new
Russian planes under the treaty.

The State Department on the other hand has argued the United States
should live up to the treaty's obligations and approve the new Russian
aircraft. The decision to certify the planes and their sensors has been
pending since late last year, long before the Ukraine crisis began. One
senior U.S. official said, “This isn’t just an issue between the United
States and Russia. Our allies and partners depend on this treaty for
insight into Russia because they don’t have the same capabilities as the
United States.”

The Russians use the aircraft today to monitor U.S. nuclear weapons
as part of arms control agreements between both countries. The Russian
planes, according to U.S. officials involved in the dispute, contain a
new sensor package that would allow Moscow to surveil American nuclear
assets with a level of precision and detail that makes U.S. military and
intelligence leaders deeply uncomfortable.

A letter first published by the Weekly Standard on April 13
from two Republican and two Democratic members of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence said the Russian Federation had just completed
construction of aircraft that will “support digital photograph
equipment, sideways-looking synthetic aperture radar, and infrared
equipment.”

A U.S. official familiar with the dispute and
sympathetic to the concerns of the military and intelligence community
told The Daily Beast that the worry over the new Russian aircraft is
independent of the standoff in Ukraine. “This would have been an issue
even if there was no Ukraine crisis,” this official said.

In some
ways, however, the Ukraine showdown has placed pressure the White House
to hold off on further angering the Russians. The State Department,
which has worked with Russia to iron out at least an agreement in
principle to begin to disarm the pro-Russian militias that have seized
eastern Ukrainian cities, wants to allow the new Russian aircraft to fly
over U.S. airspace.

The Ukraine crisis has complicated the decision-making process on the
Open Skies issue. Ukraine’s military has still failed to take back
cities that have fallen to militias that Western leaders have said
publicly are orchestrated by Russia’s special operations units known as
the Spetsnaz.

In Geneva, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov announced the beginning of a process to de-escalate the
crisis. But Lavrov also promised Kerry there were no military plans to
take Crimea in late February, only to see Spetsnaz soldiers in uniforms
without insignia take the peninsula's airports and government
buildings.

The Pentagon said a Russian fighter jet made multiple close-range
passes near an American navy destroyer. The warship was deployed in the
Black Sea as Russian military monitored NATO’s systematic build-up of
naval forces in the region.

"This provocative and unprofessional Russian action is
inconsistent with their national protocols and previous
agreements on the professional interaction between our
militaries," said Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon
spokesman. "I have difficulty believing that two Russian pilots on their
own would choose to take such an action."

Pentagon defined the jet as a Russian Su-24 aircraft, or Fencer,
which made 12 passes at low altitude near the USS Donald Cook
that, at the time, was conducting a patrol in international
waters in the western Black Sea, Reuters reported. Earlier, a military official told AP that on April, 12, a Russian
aircraft flew repeatedly within 1,000 yards of the USS Donald
Cook at about 500 feet above sea level for over 90 minutes. According to the official, the destroyer’s crew made several
attempts to radio the Russian warplane requesting the reason for
the manoeuvre. They then reportedly issued warnings to remain at
a safe distance, however, there was no response from the Russian
pilot. Pentagon confirmed the fighter jet was not armed with any aerial
bombs. A second jet was observed was observed slightly further from the
ship.

"The Donald Cook is more than capable of defending herself
against two Su-24s," said Warren. USS Donald Cook, a destroyer equipped with the powerful Aegis
missile defense system, entered Black Sea on April, 10. The US Defense Department claimed the ship’s mission was “to
reassure NATO allies and Black Sea partners” following the
events in Ukraine. On Monday, the USS Donald Cook entered waters of Romania.

‘NATO violates Montreux Convention’

Last week the Russian military considered the USS Donald Cook
manoeuvre part of a systematic build-up of naval forces. “What we are seeing is that for the first time since 2008,
NATO is creating a naval battle group outside Russian
borders,” a Russian military source told Interfax news
agency.

On April, 3, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused NATO of
violating the Montreux Convention, which regulates the number
ships that can enter the Black Sea, saying that “US warships
have extended their deployment beyond the set terms a couple of
times lately.”According to the treaty, warships from non-Black Sea states can
only stay in the basin for up to 21 days consecutively. USS
Taylor spent 11 more than that in the region in February and
March. Russia’s Foreign Ministry expressed “bemusement” over
the move. “Turkey [which administers the treaty] did not inform us
about the overstay. We have expressed our concern to the Turkish
and US side in a verbal note,” said a statement on the
ministry website

Russia’s Ministry of Defense has so far ignored the Pentagon’s
efforts to set up a phone call between the nations’ top defense
officials as its military activity increases near Ukraine, the Defense
Department said Friday. Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said
that American defense officials called Moscow to arrange a phone call
between Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and his Russian counterpart,
Sergey Shoygu, but haven’t gotten any response.

Meanwhile, Warren said, the U.S. has observed increased
activity among the Russian ground and air units posted near the
country’s border with Ukraine. Armor, mechanized infantry and airborne
units are on the move, he said.

“We’ve tried to make clear to the Russians that Secretary Hagel is
available for a phone call anytime, but we have not heard back,” Warren
said. The Pentagon made its overture “within the past 24 hours,” he
added.

Hagel is in Guatemala on a three-day trip to Central America, but
defense officials have said his military aircraft, designed as a flying
Cold War command and control center, would enable him to connect from
anywhere. He doesn’t have a new message to deliver to Moscow, Warren
said, but he wants to reiterate the same one again.

“The secretary wants to continue to call on the Russians to de-escalate the situation with Ukraine,” Warren said.

Reports about the increased Russian military activity come from
“multiple sources,” Warren said. The Russian military movements include
both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters — “all flavors of the Russian
combined arms force,” he said.

The uptick in activity could be linked with Russian announcements
that Moscow is planning new military exercises of its own to coincide
with the arrival of American paratroopers in Eastern Europe. A second
company of about 150 soldiers from the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat
Team (Airborne) arrived Friday in Latvia, following an earlier
detachment that flew to Poland.

Two more similar-sized companies are due in Estonia and Lithuania by Monday, the Pentagon said. Hagel first mentioned his desire to talk with Shoygu on Thursday
during a stop in Mexico City. He said he wanted to ask the Russians
directly about U.S. intelligence reports about the increased military
activity on the border.

“I don’t have all of the facts,” he said, “but, in fact, if these
reports that I’ve received are accurate, then this is dangerously
destabilizing. And it’s very provocative. It does not de-escalate. In
fact, these activities escalate. They make it more difficult to try to
find a diplomatic, peaceful resolution … to that issue.”

Russia has been conducting troop exercises on Ukraine's border. But an
invasion would not trigger a NATO military response - and probably not
even strong economic sanctions, says the director of Carnegie Europe.

How would NATO react if Russia invaded Ukraine?

My feeling is that NATO would condemn this very strongly. But if people
expect NATO to protect eastern Ukraine militarily and defend it - I
think they're mistaken. I don't think there's willingness on behalf of
any NATO member state to commit NATO troops to defending eastern
Ukraine. So we will not see military action. That's a pretty safe bet
and that's what Mr. Putin knows.Ukraine is not a NATO member. But wouldn't a Russian invasion
of Ukraine mean that NATO members, such as in the Baltics or in Poland,
could feel that their territorial integrity is even more threatened?

These countries have, for a long time, felt threatened over the Ukraine
developments. We've seen NATO planning on how to increase troop presence
there, how to reassure these countries and how to make it clear that
the Article 5 borders - the borders of NATO solidarity - will be
defended. The US is currently holding military exercises in Poland.
Germany has earmarked planes for air policing into the Baltic area later
this year, and other countries have committed similar kinds of assets.
That's the right thing to do. But it's almost unthinkable to have a
military response in reaction to an attack on Ukrainian territory.It's very hard to say how this is being perceived in Moscow.
The goal of the Russian policies at the moment is to regain political
control over all of Ukraine - either very quickly or over the next one
or two years. [Russia] has played things very systematically over the
last few weeks. This is the one thing that Putin has to achieve, because
under his watch Russia "lost" Ukraine, if you will. Now he needs to
right that wrong from his perspective. That's the goal. Touching Article
5 territory is not his operational goal at this point so far.Just to get this clear: You say Russia's operational goal is
to regain control over all of Ukraine - including the west of the
country, including Kyiv?

I'm talking about political control - I'm not talking about occupying
the entire country. I'm pretty convinced that it is not in Russian
interests to have a military operation in all of Ukraine. But the
ultimate goal is to regain political control over who governs the
country. Russia thought it was safe with [former Ukrainian President]
Yanukovych. They had banked on him to basically hold the fort and to
stay in power even throughout the entire Maidan process.

They miscalculated. Yanukovych fled from office, and now they need to
regain control. This is the strategic goal of Russia - to keep Ukraine
as tightly associated as possible, to tie it into its sphere of
influence. What they ultimately want is to have somebody in power who's
Russia-friendly. That's not the case at the moment, and that's something
they want to change.

The goal is that this new government, the current post-revolutionary
government, cannot succeed. It must be undermined. It must be unable to
consolidate the country. It must be unable to conduct a proper
constitutional process in the next couple of months. And it must also
fail - from the Russian perspective - to consolidate the economy.

The big question is whether Russia is playing this as a short-term game
over the next few weeks - basically until the elections in Kyiv in late
May - or whether we're looking at two years or so. I can't judge that.
But the goal itself is pretty clear.Russia has said that it was willing to hold constructive and
unbiased talks with the US over the situation in Ukraine, but at the
same time it accuses the US of wanting to seize Ukraine. What could come
out of talks between Russia and the US?

Russia has always been of the opinion - and this is on the record - that
Ukraine is not a sovereign nation, that it is not even considered a
country. Putin has said that repeatedly. And so the idea of Ukraine
deciding its own political fate, which is what the Maidan revolution and
the current political parties in Kyiv want, is completely a taboo for
the Russian side.

That is not something the Americans want. The Americans have repeatedly
said that their ultimate goal is that Ukraine can make a sovereign
decision about its own political future. This is where the major
conflict lies.The peace deal that was brokered in Geneva recently was never
actually abided by. President Obama says Russia has violated it, and
that, together with the Europeans, further economic sanctions have to be
considered. Will we see the West imposing what they call level 3
sanctions?

There are two elements in this: first of all, the Geneva talks - as it
now turns out - were very clearly a time game for the Russian side.
Russia immediately afterwards turned the provision of the Geneva
agreement around and
accused the government in Kyiv of having violated the agreement immediately. It was a very interesting and very smart game that Russia played in order to get some legitimacy for its own actions.

The second thing is the question of sanctions. Level 3 would include
massive economic sanctions. My feeling is that the Europeans don't want
to go there - partly because of German reservations, but not only. That
may even be true in the case of an outright political invasion, which is
in theory the trigger for level 3.

And then there's a second element to all of this: the division between
the Americans and the Europeans. The Americans have now decided to play
this tough, and to be very robust on Russia, and to not let this kind of
Russian attack on the post-Cold War order in Europe stand. But the
Europeans are not anywhere near that. The Europeans are playing it a lot
softer, and are a lot more wedded to the diplomatic approach, with soft
sanctions. What we therefore see is not only a division amongst the
Europeans, but also a division between the Americans and the Europeans.
And that doesn't bode well for a very united and forceful position
vis-a-vis Russia.So Ukraine, in other words, can't rely on the West for
support, because the West is divided. Will Ukraine remain a sovereign
country?

That is completely open.

My feeling is that if the current situation persists - and we kind of anticipate that -
time plays against Ukraine.
And that would of course be a devastating blow to the entire European
peace system after the Cold War, where it was clear that territorial
integrity needed to be accepted and guaranteed. And now we're back to a
system where force prevails, and where the country that is bold enough
and forceful enough can redraw the map. And that is not a kind of Europe
which looks terribly attractive for the future.Jan Techau is the director of Brussels-based Carnegie Europe,
the European think tank of the Carnegie Endowment for International
peace.

America’s
gazillion-dollar Joint Strike Fighter is supposed to go virtually
unseen when flying over enemy turf. But that’s not how things are
working out.

The F-35
Joint Strike Fighter—the jet that the Pentagon is counting on to be the
stealthy future of its tactical aircraft—is having all sorts of
shortcomings. But the most serious may be that the JSF is not, in fact,
stealthy in the eyes of a growing number of Russian and Chinese radars.
Nor is it particularly good at jamming enemy radar. Which means the
Defense Department is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to a
fighter that will need the help of specialized jamming aircraft that
protect non-stealthy—“radar-shiny,” as some insiders call them—aircraft
today.

These
problems are not secret at all. The F-35 is susceptible to detection by
radars operating in the VHF bands of the spectrum. The fighter’s
jamming is mostly confined to the X-band, in the sector covered by its
APG-81 radar. These are not criticisms of the program but the result of
choices by the customer, the Pentagon.

To suggest that the F-35 is
VHF-stealthy is like arguing that the sky is not blue—literally,
because both involve the same phenomenon. The late-Victorian physicist
Lord Rayleigh gave his name to the way that electromagnetic radiation is
scattered by objects that are smaller than its wavelength. This applies
to the particles in the air that scatter sunlight, and aircraft
stabilizers and wingtips that are about the same meter-class size as VHF
waves.

The counter-stealth attributes of VHF have been public
knowledge for decades. They were known at the dawn of stealth, in 1983,
when the MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory ordered a 150-foot-wide radar to
emulate Russia’s P-14 Oborona VHF early-warning system. Lockheed
Martin’s Fort Worth division—makers of the F-35—should know about that
radar: they built it.

Making a plane VHF-stealthy starts with removing the target’s tails,
as on the B-2 bombers. But we did not know how to do that on a
supersonic, agile airplane (like the F-35 is supposed to be) when the
JSF specifications were written.

Neither did the technology to add
broadband-active jamming to a stealth aircraft exist in 1995. Not only
did stealth advocates expect jamming to fade away, but there was an
obvious and (at the time) insoluble problem: To use jamming you have to
be certain that the radar has detected you. Otherwise, jamming is going
to reveal your presence and identify you as a stealth aircraft, since
the adversary can see a signal but not a reflection.

We can be sure that on board jamming has not been added to the F-35
since. Had the JSF requirements been tightened by one iota since the
program started, its advocates would be blaming that for the delays and
overruns.

“To
suggest that the F-35 is stealthy is like arguing that the sky is not
blue – literally, because both involve the same phenomenon.”

What
the JSF does have is a jamming function—also known as “electronic
attack,” or EA, in militaryese—in the radar. It also has an expendable
radar decoy—BAE Systems’ ALE-70. Both are last-ditch measures to disrupt
a missile engagement, not to prevent tracking.

JSF’s planners, in the mid-1990s, were close to correct when they
calculated that low-band stealth and limited EA, combined with passive
electronic surveillance for situational awareness, would be adequate at
service entry. But they expected that the F-35 would reach squadrons in
2010, and China’s military modernization was barely imaginable.

The
threats of the late 2010s will be qualitatively different. Old VHF
radars could be dealt with by breaking the kill chain between detection
and tracking: they did not provide good enough cueing to put analog,
mechanically scanned tracking radars on to the target. Active
electronically scanned array (AESA), high-power VHF radars and
decimeter- and centimeter-wave trackers are more tenacious foes.

Last
August, at an air show near Moscow, I talked to designers of a new,
highly mobile counterstealth radar system, now being delivered to the
Russian armed forces. Its centerpiece was a 100-foot-wide all-digital
VHF AESA, but it also incorporated powerful higher-frequency radars that
can track small targets once the VHF radar has detected them. More
recently, however, it has emerged that the U.S. Navy is worried because
new Chinese warships carry the Type 517M VHF search radar, which its
maker says is an AESA.

None of this is to say that stealth is dead, but it is not reasonable
to expect that the cat-and-mouse game of detection and evasion in air
combat has stopped, or that it ever will. EA and stealth still do not
coexist very comfortably on the same platform, but off board EA and
stealth are synergistic: the smaller the target, the less jamming power
is needed to mask it.

But the threat’s demonstrated agility drives
home the lesson that there is no one winning move in the radar game.
Excessive reliance on a single-point design is not a good idea, and
using fictitious secrecy to quash the debate is an even worse one.

There’s an old
saying in the
military that we’re always training for the last war, so fixated on the
lessons of our most recent conflict that we’re blind to the emerging
threat.

For years, that
last war was the Cold War, and the emerging threat was the insurgents
of Iraq and Afghanistan. Slowly, painfully, eventually, the military
reoriented itself. The result? After more than two decades of post Cold
War re-alignment, the military is less prepared than it has been in
generations for a confrontation with Russia.

No
one in Washington is calling for the U.S. to go to war over Crimea and
there are plenty of reasons why, at this point, military intervention
could be a dangerous and foolhardy course. But if circumstances change
and political leaders start looking to the military or the bargaining
power that comes from a credible threat of force, they will find their
options severely limited.

Over
the course of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq soldiers and marines
have trained for maneuvering and fighting in small units over the
landscape of the Middle East. Counter-insurgency (“COIN”) doctrine,
which stresses engagement with local civilian populations and tactics
for fighting loosely organized forces employing light weapons, has
become the military’s new bible. It’s about as far away as you can get
from the principles used in the Cold War.

According
to retired General David Deptula, who served as the Air Force’s top
intelligence officer, “we’ve been focused on the far left end of the
spectrum of operations,” by which he means the protracted, low-intensity
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he says, “if we want to
maintain superpower status we need to be prepared to succeed across the
full range of operations, not just the left end of it.”

Even the
few strategists that weren’t pre-occupied by Iraq and Afghanistan were
planning for the much-touted Asia pivot, envisioning a future, one
they’d argue is still looming, defined by Chinese hegemony. Russia,
meanwhile, was considered by many to be an historical relic; still big
enough to wield real power but no longer capable of threatening U.S.
vital interests and a second or third order afterthought when evaluating
threats the military needed to plan for.

“For
years there have been only a handful of people consistently talking
about Russia and China building highly advanced systems for use against
our ‘Cold-War era’ aircraft, missiles and ships,” Deptula says.

He’s talking about himself
and some of his closest confidants at the Air Force, who pushed for
continued production of high-end weaponry like the F-22 stealth
fighter—right when the Iraq insurgency was at its peak. It made Deptula
and his gang seem like Mach 2 dinosaurs, pining for a conflict with an
imaginary enemy while the real bad guys were blowing up Marines in
Fallujah. Understandably, Robert Gates, the Defense Secretary of the
time, wanted the military to focus on the wars America was actually fighting
at the moment. And so eventually, many of Deptula’s
colleagues—including Gen. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, the Air Force’s top
officer—were shown the door when they opposed Gates once too often.
According to Deptula, “those people were ignored by [former Defense
Secretary] Gates, and some were fired because they had the courage to
speak truth to power.”

As
the White House and Pentagon planners consider what to do if Russia
invades Eastern Ukraine or deploys its forces elsewhere in the region,
the limited choices available reveal just how profoundly the military
has changed since the Cold War.

For
half a century, Cold War military strategy focused on containing Russia
and winning in clashes between large conventional forces. On the
ground, that strategy called for mass formations organized around tanks
and heavy weaponry. In the skies it relied on dominance in Top Gun style
style air-to-air fighting prowess, radar evading stealth technology,
and powerful bombers that could drop massive munitions to destroy enemy
armor and fortified installations.

Since
the end of the Cold War, that strategy has been completely overhauled.
Training and doctrine have focused on small unit tactics while new
weapons and vehicles have been designed with squads in mind rather than
divisions. Super-sophisticated dogfighters, like the $187 million-a-pop
F-22, suddenly seemed too fancy to actually use. Who would fit the bill
if one actually went down? Instead, drones costing less than a tenth the
price littered the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq.

But
those drones are useless against any military with a half-decent system
for shooting down enemy aircraft. And Russian has one of the best air
defenses on the planet. Suddenly, it’s those iconic Predator drones that
seem obsolete.

“Hopefully
the situation with Russia and Ukraine will be a bucket of cold water on
those who believe all we need to be able to do is counter-insurgency
operations,” Deptula told The Daily Beast.

And now, there are signs that the U.S. Air Force’s long-held technological advantage may be eroding. The
new generation of Russian fighter plane, the T-50, isn’t yet fully
operational but it “will be produced much sooner that Gates and his
crowd predicted,” Deptula says. He adds that “once the T-50s are
produced in sufficient numbers there won’t be anything in the NATO fleet
that can deal with them except the F-22s and F-35s.”

David Axe, the long-time military tech writer
notes that the T-50, which can fire long-range missiles while flying
both high and fast, may be able to “exploit critical vulnerabilities in
U.S. and allied forces and level the air power playing field for the
first time in a generation.”

An independent Australian think tank, Air Power Australia,
drew a more severe conclusion. “If the United States does not
fundamentally change its planning for the future of tactical air power,
the advantage held for decades will be soon lost and American air power
will become an artifact of history.”

While
Russian aircraft rely on speed and long flight times, the U.S. fleet is
largely built for stealth so it can evade detection and anti-air
weapons to engage targets at closer ranges. But the stealth capability,
is now being challenged by advances in Russia’s radar detection platforms and anti-aircraft weapons.

“Today,”
Deptula said, “the Russians have an extant significant advantage in
their surface to air capabilities.” And that with the exception of the
U.S.’s small number of highly advanced 5th generation aircraft, “the
Russians can conduct area denial of any airspace within range of their
defenses if they want to deny access to aircraft.”

Since 2001, the Pentagon
has had good reasons for prioritizing spending for troops on the ground
in Iraq and Afghanistan over speculative needs for future wars, but a
consequence has been that we now have what Deptula calls “a geriatric
Air Force and Navy fleet.”

No
one, not even Deptula, is suggesting that there’s about to be some
all-out showdown between Moscow’s military and Washington. But it’s not
at all unlikely, given the new and chilly climate, that American forces
and allies could wind up in skirmishes with proxies equipped and trained
by Russia. The U.S. used to be able to count on an overwhelming
technological advantage. Tomorrow, maybe not.

Foreshadows
of this are already being cast. Already, Russia is outfitting the Assad
regime in Syria while America runs guns to the rebels there. It’s the
Russian side that’s winning.

The
change isn’t just about equipment or tactics, though, American forces
trained in counter-insurgency who are stationed in Europe could still be
deployed to hold the line against Russian advances. But there are
drastically fewer forces left in Europe available to be called upon in
such an event.

An analysis of Defense cuts published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute
in 2013 reported that “the Army alone has closed 100 installations in
Europe since 2003 and plans on returning an additional 47 installations
to host nations by 2015.” The same report notes, “the Navy has also been
consolidating and decreasing its European bases” and “since 1990, the
Air Force has reduced aircraft and forces stationed in Europe by 75
percent.” Addressing the future of America’s military footprint in
Europe, the paper concludes that the Pentagon is “planning to continue
reducing the US presence in Europe by approximately 15 percent over the
coming decade.”

The
military can’t be equally prepared for every threat and if its focus
has been on counter-insurgency, that’s because those are the wars we’ve
been fighting for the past twelve years.

Generations
of veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan have been raised and
bled on COIN doctrine but, as combat demands, they have also learned how
to be agile. Individual leaders on the battlefield are able to adapt
quickly; it’s the military bureaucracy that’s like a tank: a slow,
immensely powerful machine that’s only capable of plotting one course at
a time. Quick turns are not an option.

Without
many viable military options to counter Russian aggression what’s left
for U.S. leaders seeking to punish Russia and assure our NATO allies
that we’ll protect them? Cunning diplomacy, maybe.

Crimea
is Russian now; that’s not changing any time soon. Condemning the
invasion and the fixed terms of the referendum have no more bearing on
the current situation than the reasons Russia gave for annexing
Crimea—some of them legitimate—ultimately had to do with the duplicity
and force they used to take it.

The
real question, and the subtext in much of the current talk about
Crimea, is whether Russia will stop there or proceed to further
conquests.

Despite it’s show
of force in Crimea, Moscow has a lot to lose if the conflict broadens
and draws in the U.S. and NATO. Russia has gas to sell to Europe,
oligarchs counting on feeling comfortable in their London townhouses, a
new middle class looking for normalcy that’s already taken to the
streets in protest, and the memory of Chechnya, a brutal war that took
thousands of lives, fresh in the national memory.

If
U.S. officials can present a deal that satisfies American aims while
appealing to Russia’s self-interest, they may be able to prevent a
larger conflict. But a new age of competition with Russia? That may be
even harder to head off.